On July 10 2018, the Research Symposium, a workshop organized by Corporate Research & Development Director Donato Zangani to present our main initiatives and R&D projects, took place in RINA office in Rozzano, Milan.
“The measure of the intelligence is the ability to change”: this is how our COO Roberto Carpaneto opened the event, quoting Albert Einstein to underline how R&D is playing a strategic role in the development of new and innovative services that allow RINA to stay ahead of market trends. Indeed, 2017 was a successful year thanks to the multidisciplinary approach adopted and the fruitful collaboration of our five Business Units: about 200 R&D proposals were submitted, 50 new R&D projects started and 116 ongoing R&D projects were brought forward.
The multidisciplinary collaboration among our engineering teams was one of the keys of this success and a positive example to follow is represented by the “Working Group on Disaster Resilience & Critical Infrastructures Protection” launched in December 2017. Involving the Energy, Transport & Infrastructures, Certification and Industry BUs, it aims to identify potential synergies among competencies residing in different BUs, thus coordinating efforts aimed at developing new and innovative services in this emerging domain, also thanks to R&D activities.
Several speakers joined the Research Symposium to share their know-how and R&D project experiences:
• Clemente Fuggini, Ivan Ogbu Tesfai and Fabrizio Lagasco, who gave an overview about Disaster Resilience and Critical Infrastructure Protection;
• Margherita Cioffi, who focused on Nanotechnologies, Advanced Materials, Biotechnology and Advanced Manufacturing and Processing;
• Andrea Maria Ferrari, Pietro Gimondo and Giorgio Gentile, who spoke about Sustainable Industry;
• Alessandro Maccari, who held a speech about R&D in the Marine sector;
• Andrea Pestarino, Giannicola Loriga and Stefano Barberis, who introduced the audience to Sustainable Energy;
• Francesco Sperandio, Silvia Sturaro and Anna Paraboschi, who focused on R&D in Transport & Infrastructure;
• Antonio Ferraro, who prepared a presentation about R&D in the Certification field.
Thanks to R&D, RINA contributes to solving the grand societal challenges, while new knowledge is generated or existing knowledge is enhanced with the strategic intent to develop new and innovative services, which will contribute to boosting our competitiveness in the markets in which we operate.