2000

ENEA launches the project Archimede on thermodynamic solar energy conceived by Carlo Rubbia. The thermodynamic solar power plant is to be inaugurated in 2018 in Borg-el-Aram, near Alexandria in Egypt.

Astrophysicist Riccardo Giacconi wins the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is considered the father of X-ray astronomy.

Olivetti Tecnost, a subsidiary of Telecom Italia, changes its company name to Olivetti and relaunches the historic brand. New products are presented: the Any_Way, a multifunctional printer, and the My_Way, for photographic prints.

Geneticist Elena Cattaneo, known for her research on stem cells and on the neurodegenerative genetic disease Huntington's chorea, founds, with Giulio Cossu, Fulvio Gandolfi, and Ivan Torrente, the Interdepartmental Center for Stem Cell Research at the Università di Milano (University of Milan), becoming its director.

Italian-American Mario Renato Capecchi wins the Nobel Prize for Medicine for developing the gene targeting technology fundamental for studies on embryogenesis, immunology, neurobiology, and diseases such as cancer.

Italian engineer Samantha Cristoforetti is selected as an astronaut by the European Space Agency (ESA), making her the first Italian woman ever to play this role.

The Consiglio dall' Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Council of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics) elects physicist Lucia Votano director of the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (Gran Sasso National Laboratories).

The cable-stayed railway bridge over the Po is inaugurated along the Bologna-Milan high-speed line engineered by Mario Paolo Petrangeli.

On 18 December, with provisions by the CNR president, the Commissione Oceanografica Italiana (Italian Oceanographic Commission) is born.

Astrophysicist Simonetta Di Pippo, president and co-founder of the international association "Women in Aerospace Europe," is appointed director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in Vienna, which coordinates international cooperation regarding space activities.

Physicist Fabiola Gianotti of INFN, previously head of the Atlas experiment that led to the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, becomes the first woman appointed director of CERN.

Microbiologist Rino Rappuoli wins the European Inventor Award 2017, for developing and patenting the first vaccines for all forms of meningococcal infections (A, B, C, Y, and W135), today used worldwide.

With the opening of the 'Mario Zucchelli' station, the XXXIII Summer Campaign of the Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA; National Program of Research in Antarctica) gets underway, implemented by ENEA for logistical aspects, by CNR for scientific planning and coordination, and with the participation of the Armed Forces.

The Ernest Beutler Prize from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) is awarded to Luigi Naldini, director of the Istituto San Raffaele Terapia Genica di Milano (San Raffaele Gene Therapy Institute of Milan) for scientific contribution to the development of gene therapy for treatment of rare genetic diseases and treatment of some tumors.

The Società Geografica Italiana (Italian Geographical Society) and the Geographic Research and Application Laboratory (GREAL) of the Università Europea di Roma (European University of Rome), CERN, INFN, and other partners, take part in the "Polarquest" expedition carried out on board the eco-sustainable vessel Nanuq, on the 90th anniversary of the Arctic flights of the airship Italia

A study conducted by Marco Cosentino Lagomarsino, a researcher at Istituto Firc per l'Oncologia Molecolare (IFOM; Firc Institute for Molecular Oncology), and a group of Italian researchers demonstrates that cell division does not necessarily take place sequentially with respect to the processes linked to the chromosome.