“Gilberto Vlaic” XVIII School on Synchrotron Radiation: Fundamentals, Methods and Applications

From 21 September to 1 October 2026, the conference hall at Porto San Rocco (Muggia, Trieste) hosted the 18th edition of the School of Synchrotron Radiation, named after its founder, Gilberto Vlaic.

Organized by Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste in collaboration with the Italian Synchrotron Radiation Society (SILS), the school welcomed 43 students from Italy and abroad.

Over the ten-day programme, internationally renowned lecturers and experts in a wide range of experimental techniques took turns delivering lectures and in-depth sessions, with a particular focus on FERMI, Elettra’s free-electron laser, which was also the main focus of the students’ on-site visit.

The students had the opportunity to visit the FERMI control room, gaining first-hand insight into the operation of the facility and the management of experimental activities. The visit programme also included sessions focusing on three main scientific areas: femtomagnetism, presented by Flavio Capotondi and Marco Malvestuto; structural dynamics, presented by Filippo Bencivenga and Emiliano Principi; and electron dynamics, presented by Federico Cilento and Paola Di Pietro.

Divided into groups, the students also followed a programme covering the facility’s various beamlines and laboratories. Each group visited four of the six experimental stations included in the programme: DiProI, MagneDyn, TIMER, TIMEX, T-ReX and TeraFERMI. The visits gave the students the opportunity to gain first-hand knowledge of the different experimental activities and scientific applications of the stations, through dedicated sessions presenting the techniques and research carried out in the individual laboratories.