Knowledge about the building blocks of cultural and natural phenomena lays the foundation for human understanding of the fundamental structure of our world and the processes by which it develops. Basic research is the necessary ingredient to extend the limits of the knowable. As the trunk of the tree - no leaves would be green without it. As children’s stories - essentials in preparing the field for future learning.
Our research covers all disciplinary areas, since the foundation of the University.
Let’s think about physics, philosophy, medicine, mathematics… where UNIPI achieved outstanding results throughout history: from Galileo to Fermi and Rubbia, from Vesalio to Malpighi, the discoveries of UNIPI alumni and researchers paved the way for fundamental changes in the understanding of reality.
Fostering basic research will continue leading the University of Pisa to create new ideas, theories, models while critically assess, study, change and deal with current and future global issues.
BASIC AND TRANSLATIONAL NEUROSCIENCES - Perception, behavior, neuroimaging
Unveiling Human Mind and Its Complexity: how Cognitive Science and the embodied mind theory have created a stronger interdisciplinary connection between cognitive understanding in social science and humanities.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, CHEMICAL THEORY, PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY, CHEMICAL PHYSICS - Environment effect, photopharmacology
Development of multi-scale approaches based on the integration of quantum chemistry and classical models and their implementation in efficient computational codes.
MATHEMATHICS, PHYSICS - Geometry, Analysis, Theoretical Physics, Optics
Geometric Variational Problems;
Theoretical aspects of partial differential equations; laser physics and photonics; quantum fields theory.
HISTORY, PHILOLOGY, LITERATURE
Ancient history, Egyptology;
Phylosophycal concepts and linguistic bridges;
Literature theory;
Ancient and classical languages.
Flagship projects
Funding programme: H2020 - ERC Starting Grant
PUPILTRAITS aims to improve our understanding of visual perception by applying an innovative approach to vision science to study how vision is affected by physiological state and personality traits. Visual processing will be elucidated using classic and new methods, including pupil responses, ultra-high-field magnetic resonance of visual cortex, and psychophysics. The goal is to obtain knowledge about the relationship between metabolism, cortical processing and perception.
Funding programme: PRIN 2017
Pharaonic Rescission: Objects as Crucibles of Ancient Egyptian Societies (PROCESS) aims to write a social history of ancient Egypt, focusing on the productive level of society in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. The team is implementing a methodology to profile the identity of ancient workers through archaeometric analyses and the study of traces left by manufacture and use.
Funding programme: H2020 – ERC Advanced Grant
The project intends to reveal the ‘design principles’ used by Nature for responding to light and give a “practical” instrument to test “in silico” new techniques for the control of cellular processes by manipulating protein functions through light and by studying from different points of views and disciplines how organisms of all domains of life are capable of sensing, using and responding to light. The molecular mechanisms used are diverse, but most commonly the starting event is an electronic excitation localized on a chromophoric unit bound to a protein matrix. Through a strategy based upon the integration of quantum chemistry, classical atomistic and coarse-grained models up to continuum approximations, the project aims at developing high-performance computing codes.