Seminar - Against the flow: how much can we control river sediment dynamics?

Speaker: Dr. Mirko Musa, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland | Tuesday 17 March 2026 | 4,30 p.m. - Arduino Classroom

17.03.2026

Sediment transport and river morphodynamics are among the most complex and least understood challenges in civil engineering and Earth sciences. While the ambition to control them may seem like wishful thinking, it has long driven scientific and engineering progress, from erosion mitigation and flood

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Seminar - Functional Soil Properties in Viticulture: Soil and Geological Controls on Terroir Across Scales

Speaker: Prof. Edoardo A.C. Costantini CNR-IBE - Biology, Agriculture and Food Sciences Department, Sesto Fiorentino | Tuesday 10 March 2026 | 4,30 p.m. - Arduino Classroom

10.03.2026

The presentation examines how soil properties and geology shape terroir and wine quality at different scales. Terroir is defined as the unique combination of environmental and human factors influencing wine quality. Key soil properties—such as texture, stoniness, drainage, color, water and nutrient

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Seminar - How unique is our home planet? Geochemical evidence for an ancient subduction zone on Mars

Speaker: Prof. Frank E. Brenker – Schwiete Cosmochemistry Laboratory, Goethe University, Frankfurt | Thursday 5 March 2026 | 4,30 p.m. - Classroom 1F

05.03.2026

Habitable Earth seems a rather unique place in our Solar System. Comparing processes like plate tectonics at different planetary bodies will help to better understand mechanism on our home planet.Although some moons of Jupiter show evidence for icy plate tectonic processes, recent plate tectonics

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Ceremony at the Department for the Retirement of Professor Cristina Stefani

26.02.2026

The Department of Geosciences marked the retirement of Professor Cristina Stefani with a well-attended ceremony celebrating her long-standing contribution to research, teaching and academic leadership.The event opened with institutional remarks by the Director, Professor Nicola Surian, who

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Seminar - Geomorphic controls on organic carbon storage and flux in river corridors

Speaker: Prof. Katherine B. Lininger – Geography Department, University of Colorado Boulder (USA) | Tuesday 3 March 2026 | 4,30 p.m. - Arduino Classroom

03.03.2026

River corridors (channels and floodplains) are active components of the carbon cycle, transporting, transforming, and storing carbon. However, the details of how carbon is partitioned and stored in river corridors are still relatively unexplored. In this seminar, I provide examples of how geomorphic

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Seminar - The Secret History of Sharks. A story of evolution and survival

Speaker: Prof. John Long - College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide (South Australia) | Thursday 19 February 2026 | 3,30 p.m. - Classroom 1F

19.02.2026

Chondrichthyans (sharks, rays and holocephalans) originated around 465 million years ago, but their fossil record is very scant for the first few tens of millions of years. They survived all 5 of Earth's mass extinction events, but they haven't always had it easy. Their origin story (Ordovician

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Seminar - Testing the permeability of the barrier separating the inner and outer circumsolar disk

Speaker: Dr. Yves Marrocchi - Director of the Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques (CRPG-CNRS, France) | Tuesday 24 February 2026 | 4,30 p.m. - Arduino Classroom

24.02.2026

Meteorites provide key insights on the evolution of the solar system. The recent discovery of a fundamental isotopic dichotomy between non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (C) meteorites attests that the solar system was divided by a physical barrier into two distinct reservoirs. However, the

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Tribute concert in memory of Riccardo Pozzobon

18.01.2026

Last September, a tragic accident during a work mission in Alaska claimed the life of Riccardo Pozzobon, planetary geologist, researcher at the Department of Geosciences of the University of Padua, and collaborator with the European Space Agency as an astronaut instructor.Alongside his scientific

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International award for research on extreme short-duration rainfall

13.01.2026

Short-duration extreme rainfall events play a critical role in triggering flash floods and debris flows, yet they remain among the most challenging phenomena to analyse and project under climate change. These issues are the focus of an award-winning study co-authored by Francesco Marra, Associate

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Seminar - Disaster Risk Management and Emergency response: The Italian Civil Protection System

Speaker: Dr. Daniela Di Bucci - Italian Civil Protection Department | Thursday 15 January 2026 | 10,30 am - Classroom 1F

15.01.2026

Dr. Daniela Di BucciStructural Geologist, Ph.D. in Earth Sciences, Master's degree in Behavioural Sciences and Administrations, National Scientific Habilitation as Full Professor of Structural Geology. Expert in geo-hazards and in the relationship between the scientific community and policymakers in

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