SHARPER 2026: bringing research into the city

Once again in 2026, Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste took part in the European Researchers’ Night, the Europe-wide initiative that brings research beyond the laboratory and creates opportunities for researchers to meet schools, local communities and curious minds of all ages.

In Trieste, Elettra contributed to SHARPER – SHAring Researchers’ Passion for Education and Rights with a series of events spanning around ten days. Fashion, music, viruses and atoms all became starting points for exploring research from unexpected perspectives and discovering how science can be found in places where we might not normally think to look.

Io vedo altro: when science looks at fashion
What does a scientist see when looking at a garment, a fabric or a material? Certainly more than meets the naked eye.
This shift in perspective was at the heart of the second edition of “Io vedo altro. Quando la scienza osserva la moda” (“I see something else: when science looks at fashion”), organised by Area Science Park and ITS Arcademy in two sessions, held in English on 17 September and in Italian on 24 September.
Taking the exhibition “EXPOSURE – Quando il mondo ti guarda” as their starting point, researchers created a journey connecting fashion and art with neuroscience, artificial intelligence, light, biodiversity and materials research.
Representing Elettra were Ilargi Napal Azcona, postdoctoral researcher, and Ilaria Carlomagno, researcher, who showed how synchrotron light can take us beyond the surface to investigate properties of matter that are invisible to the human eye. Together with researchers from SISSA, Area Science Park and Shoreline, they invited the audience to discover new ways of looking at the world around us.

An hour with a researcher: looking inside a violin without opening it.
Can you look inside a violin without taking it apart or damaging it? With synchrotron light and computed tomography, you can.
On 22 September, Nicola Sodini from Elettra’s SYRMEP beamline met students from the Stock and Divisione Julia lower secondary schools as part of the “1 h con il ricercatore” (“One hour with a researcher”) initiative.
Sodini showed how advanced imaging techniques can reveal the inside of an instrument, reconstructing its structure and materials in three dimensions and uncovering details that can tell us something about its history.
The encounter brought physics, art and music together, illustrating how tools developed for scientific research can also contribute to the study and preservation of cultural heritage.
Faster than the virus

How is a new antiviral drug developed? And how can research today help us prepare for viruses that may emerge tomorrow?
These were among the questions explored in “Più veloci del virus: la corsa per fermare la prossima pandemia” (“Faster than the virus: the race to stop the next pandemic”), an activity dedicated to the European AVITHRAPID project and its work on broad-spectrum antiviral drugs.
At the exhibition area, visitors discovered how structural biology and Elettra’s synchrotron light can be used to study viral proteins, providing crucial information in the search for new drugs.
The morning sessions involved schools, while in the afternoon research became a challenge for the wider public, with a prize quiz on viruses, science and the development of new antiviral therapies.

Street Science: how do you make a TikTok of atoms?
How do you take a picture of something that never stands still and moves on almost unimaginably short timescales? And what if that “something” is an atom or a molecule?
On Friday 25 September, Giuseppe Penco, accelerator physicist and Head of Operations at Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste’s FERMI Free Electron Laser, brought ultrafast physics to Street Science with a deliberately unconventional title: “Come si fa un TikTok degli atomi?” – “How do you make a TikTok of atoms?”

Following atoms and molecules as they move and transform requires extraordinarily fast “flashes”. Penco explained how FERMI’s ultrashort light pulses, lasting just femtoseconds – millionths of a billionth of a second – make it possible to observe phenomena that would otherwise remain beyond our view.
The principle is not so different from making a video: images are captured fast enough to follow motion as it unfolds. Except that here the protagonists are atoms and molecules, and the action takes place on the timescales of the fundamental processes of matter.

From fashion and violins to viral proteins and atoms in motion, Elettra’s participation in SHARPER 2026 explored different ways of seeing what we cannot normally see.
Together, these events accompanied the European Researchers’ Night by bringing not only scientific results and technologies beyond the laboratory, but above all the researchers themselves, creating opportunities for direct encounters with students and the wider public.