Research: five projects from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies funded by the Global Seed Funds, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology program to foster international collaborations
Five projects from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa have been funded by the Global Seed Funds (GSF), the funding program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that supports international research collaborations between faculty and researchers from the U.S. university and academic or institutional partners in other countries.
The research areas of the funded projects include artificial intelligence applied to engineering, neurotechnology and bioengineering for medical treatments, fiber optic sensors, climate change adaptation policies, and soft robotics for the early diagnosis of heart diseases. This is an important result that confirms the international appeal of the interdisciplinary research carried out at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and opens the door to new scientific collaborations on strategically relevant topics.
More specifically, the five funded projects are as follows.
CRYSTAR: new fiber optic sensors for temperature measurement in extreme environments
The CRYSTAR project (an acronym for CRYstal Sensors for high Temperature And Radiation environments) aims to develop next-generation fiber optic sensors for measuring temperature in extreme environments, characterized by very high temperatures and intense levels of radiation (for example, advanced space propulsion systems and nuclear micro-reactors).
The activity focuses on innovative optical fibers capable of operating up to approximately 1600°C and resistant to radiation-induced degradation. This makes it possible to address a key challenge in the development of next-generation energy and propulsion technologies: the lack of reliable sensors under extreme conditions.
The project stems from a collaboration between MIT and the Institute of Mechanical Intelligence at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies. The project is coordinated by Giancarlo Santamato, a researcher in Applied Mechanics within the Robotics, Mechanical and Materials Engineering area directed by Prof. Marco Fontana, with the involvement of the Photonic Sensing Integrated Systems area led by Prof. Di Pasquale and the Space Technologies area led by Prof. Tommaso Andreussi.
CORDIS — Cardiac Outcomes Recognition via Diagnostic Integrated Simulator
Early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases remains one of the major challenges in modern medicine, still constrained by invasive procedures and the limited availability of high-quality diagnostic data. CORDIS — Cardiac Outcomes Recognition via Diagnostic Integrated Simulator addresses this challenge by developing a soft cardiac simulator capable of accurately replicating the anatomy of the human heart and its pathological conditions. This approach enables the generation of large-scale clinical datasets, which are essential for training and validating artificial intelligence models for cardiovascular disease diagnosis. By integrating physical simulation with artificial intelligence, CORDIS aims to advance the development of accurate, early, and non-invasive diagnostic tools for a wide range of cardiac conditions.
Through the MISTI program, CORDIS will strengthen the collaboration between the Soft Mechatronics for Biorobotics (SMB) Lab at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, coordinated by prof Matteo Cianchetti, and the Therapeutic Technologies Design & Development (TTDD) Lab at MIT: two research groups that will combine complementary expertise in soft robotics and cardiovascular medicine.
Equitable Climate Resilience Across Governance Levels in Europe (ERGE)
The ERGE project, coordinated by Janelle Knox-Hayes for MIT and Riccardo Luporini for SSSA, focuses on climate change adaptation policies, with the aim of exploring whether and how the “Equitable Resilience Framework” can be applied in the European context.
Although increasingly developed and widespread, climate change adaptation laws and policies often fail to adequately address issues of equity, justice, and community participation. As a result, their implementation risks reinforcing existing social and territorial inequalities.
The “Equitable Resilience Framework”, recently developed at MIT, proposes an innovative approach to planning, with the aim of making adaptation policies more equitable and effective.
The ERGE project will examine the extent to which principles of equity are reflected – or overlooked – in European climate adaptation law and policy. It will also assess whether and how these principles are incorporated into national strategies in Italy and how they are concretely implemented at the municipal level through local adaptation and risk reduction planning tools.
The seed grant will support two research exchanges, one in Pisa and one in Boston, involving the project’s principal investigators and participating students. This initiative represents a first step towards a broader interdisciplinary collaboration on climate adaptation, resilience, and public policy.
Towards AI co-pilot for turbomachinery engineering
The project “Towards AI Co-Pilot for Turbomachinery Engineering,” which will be developed in collaboration between Masha Folk (MIT) and Francesco Montomoli (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna – CISC), aims to develop new artificial intelligence tools to support engineers in the field of turbomachinery, such as aircraft engines. In particular, the team will focus on creating an assistant based on Large Language Models (LLMs) capable of interpreting complex data, including CFD simulations and technical documentation, thereby facilitating engineering design decisions.
Modulating colonic motility via spinal cord neuromodulation
This project brings together MIT’s Laboratory for Translational Engineering coordinated by prof. Giovanni Traverso, and the Sensorimotor Neurotechnology Lab at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna coordinated by prof Solaiman Shokur to explore new treatments for intestinal motility disorders, which are especially severe in people with spinal cord injuries. The goal is to test whether electrical stimulation of the spinal cord can modulate gut activity in humans. Using epidural stimulation systems already implanted in patients, combined with non-invasive monitoring techniques, researchers will map gastrointestinal electrical patterns and assess their response to targeted stimulation. The study aims to identify reliable strategies to control motility, paving the way for future clinical trials and the development of innovative implantable or non-invasive therapies to improve patients’ quality of life
