Brains of Italy

By Simone Malacrida

The book is conceived as a journey through the Italy of research, through successive meetings with each of the researchers. The author of the book acts as the connecting link, bringing together the different stories, asking questions and reflections, jotting down ideas and impressions of places and people. The author also serves as a spectator and protagonist, being himself in search of something during this journey. Various cities are touched upon during the year-long journey, including Rome, Trieste, Milan, Lodi, Naples, Turin, Cosenza, Bologna, Bari and Padua, which are the background of the encounters. The stories of these researchers are extrapolated by following a dialogic form and emphasizing, from time to time, different aspects so as to form a complete picture especially on what drives a person to take the path of research and what are the underlying motivations and possible successes of applications and studies. These stories tell about "normal" people, and all the people involved in the book have a common generational trait, being mostly born in the mid-1970s, so a generation of 30-35 year olds will be discussed. The ten stories cover different fields, not only at the level of the scientific or medical field, and highlight different paths of growth, so not only "pure" researchers (academic and university field) will be talked about, but also those who work in industry as employees or those who have founded a business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simone Malacrida
• Release date: Dec 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215798775

Simone Malacrida

Simone Malacrida (1977) Ha lavorato nel settore della ricerca (ottica e nanotecnologie) e, in seguito, in quello industriale-impiantistico, in particolare nel Power, nell'Oil&Gas e nelle infrastrutture. E' interessato a problematiche finanziarie ed energetiche. Ha pubblicato un primo ciclo di 21 libri principali (10 divulgativi e didattici e 11 romanzi) + 91 manuali didattici derivati. Un secondo ciclo, sempre di 21 libri, è in corso di elaborazione e sviluppo.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

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Genesis of a project: the idea, the book and the context

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The origin and context of this book were both coincidences that occurred over the course of at least two years. The book was born from a provocation, from an idea that was thought to be deliberately provocative, at the beginning of the summer of 2008 and fits into a context that, only in 2011, finds its ideal outlet, that of the celebration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 'Unification of Italy.

For a better understanding of what will be covered, let's review, very briefly, these two abundant years of progress. The first version and the first draft envisaged a sort of writing on the general condition of Italian research, a sort of white paper on the state of affairs. Soon, the inherent limitations of this planning became clear. This book would fit into the perspective of many others that have been published in recent years, marking even more some existing and striking phenomena (such as that of brain drain or brain cage), and not the real objectives would have been achieved, namely those of emphasizing how it is possible, despite all the known problems, to carry out research in Italy and how, at times, this really leads to professional success and prestige. Furthermore, and this was only clear in hindsight, a white paper conceived in this way would certainly not have adapted to the final context.

Basically, such an approach would have cast another shadow on the real usefulness of undertaking a career in the world of research or technology in Italy, in total opposition to the image that, in many countries around the world and also among us, but alas in other times (and we will see which times in this introduction), scientists, researchers, engineers, doctors are on the one hand completely normal people - and not endowed with any particular strangeness - while from On the other hand, they carry out an activity that is not only useful and fundamental, but also one of potential personal success. It was precisely the awareness of a different approach that determined that provocative idea which then entered the aforementioned context.

After some evolution, the initial concept migrated towards the description of the strengths of the Italian system, placing the accent and attention on those which could be issues at the center of public opinion and of significant national interest, such as impact of research on the economy and development of a country or the many local initiatives that have stood out at European and global level.

Once the ideas on the what one wanted to describe had been clarified, it was necessary to decide how to do it. The real turning point that led to the creation of the book came after the decision to subjectify these strengths through the collection of personal stories. Against this background, the competition When those who search find was framed by the Italian Association for Research in February 2009 and aimed at all researchers who carry out their activity in Italy. Following an evaluation, carried out according to general criteria of transparency and meritocracy, ten candidates were selected who were asked, during the spring of 2009, for a subsequent study.

This book is the logical continuation of the competition and of the previous path, the reconstruction, increasingly subjective and focused on the stories of single people, of what emerged, evaluated and investigated.

Once the drafting of the book was completed (and we will see at the end of the introduction what were the key points that guided the reconstruction of these ten stories), there was still a need to find an adequate context that would provide the appropriate framework for the previous work. Once again in an almost entirely casual way, during the autumn of 2010, the suggestions deriving from the then imminent 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy provided the meaning and context of this whole journey, projecting a historical and perspective to what was a journey through Italy in ten stages thanks to ten different and successive meetings.

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The usual suspects: Italian research and its problems

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It was said at the beginning that this book was born from a provocative idea; but not for this, this idea can misrepresent reality.

It is not possible, even if the intention is animated by good intentions, to act as if nothing had happened and go further, describing an idyllic situation of the state of research in Italy through some exemplary stories; there are problems and they shouldn't be hidden.

At the same time, this book will not focus on these topics and that is why they will be presented briefly in this introduction, sometimes returning as background and hints in some of the stories presented. Precisely because this book is characterized not by the denunciation of problems and difficulties, but by the hope and transmission of a positive message, the usual suspects are presented in this introduction and not in the dialogues that make up the writing, without however having the claim to be exhaustive in so little physical space.

Let's begin by saying that the general problems of research in Italy are entirely contingent and linked to today's situation and many of the questions are connected to the panorama of current Italian society. Luckily, it wasn't always like this. If we look at the history of these 150 years, we can see how some historical periods have been characterized by a completely opposite vision. There have been moments of great change in which the younger generations have implemented a radical renewal of society (at least three different generations have contributed to the unification of Italy, the Resistance and student movements) and in which meritocracy was not suffocated by systems that are gerontocratic and not very rewarding in terms of salary and social position (for example, the era in which talents such as Fermi established themselves). Therefore, if there is not an ancestral and endemic problem, but a contingent one, the need arises to analyze what the usual suspects are in order to discover their causes and to go in search of solutions.

Overturning a general vision of the problems afflicting Italian research, let's put the salary question first, because after all, research is done by researchers and the objective and superior concepts of research and culture are completely useless if there are no subjects active in carrying out a constant daily work.

We know that doing research has never been a job in itself profitable, but the current Italian situation is dramatic. The entry salary of an Italian researcher is just over a thousand euros, in France it almost doubles and the European average is 50% higher than the Italian one. The same situation can be highlighted for research grants and doctoral scholarships.

The data available at European level clearly indicate that Italy is the country with the lowest salaries for researchers, especially young ones, while in the high income brackets, for example for full professors, there is a substantial alignment.

Furthermore, this discourse can be placed in a broader context. The Italian recent graduate has an entry salary in private companies, on average, below the threshold of one thousand euros, a figure 40% lower than his European colleagues and this tare continues for most of the beginning of the working career.

This is the first common fact of a generation, one of the key elements of the Italian brain drain to other countries. It is no coincidence that the salary issue is the first reason that pushes young Italians, graduates, doctorates and researchers to go abroad and, incidentally, it is also one of the main reasons for the lack of grip on high-level foreign students and workers .

It should be noted that by now we no longer only mean going overseas (par excellence, to the United States), but simply moving within Europe, to countries with the same currency, the same standard of living, the same cost of life and, perhaps, neighboring; therefore, easily reachable in a short time. Low-cost flights, voice and visual communications via mobile phone or computer at low or no cost, the ever-increasing diffusion of knowledge of foreign languages and cultures, the Erasmus programs and, last but not least, the introduction of the euro, these are all factors that have contributed to the birth of the so-called generation X characterized by high social mobility, especially in Europe.

Without an adequate response to the wage question, which is only one response, that of immediately increasing entry-level wages by a significant amount, the drain of talent and brainpower will continue and this response must be given by the Italian system in general , from politics to industry, from universities to trade unions, from the mass media to civil society.

Not giving answers, acting as if nothing had happened, would lead to an even more paradoxical situation because in other countries we are increasingly equipping ourselves to attract young and highly qualified figures and therefore we would further increase the existing gap, already itself dramatic in proportions and consequences.

The alternative is decline. A society that makes its young people flee and does not attract them from outside is a society that ages progressively, a society made up more and more of retirees and less and less of those who are able to support public finances and social services through the creation of new income.

Already this first point makes us reflect on how certain concepts have changed, if, as we can easily see, almost all innovative and potentially revolutionary ideas for society come from generations considered young (the majority of theories that have overturned physics and mathematics of the twentieth century were elaborated by thirty-year-olds, just as the Thousand were nothing but big boys of the time). Our country absolutely needs a vital impetus coming from these generations, to give it up would be, as we have already said, a slow path towards decline and this was not what the Constituent Assembly hoped for just over sixty years ago.

Together with the salary situation, there is the contractual one which exalts even more certain differences and certain paradoxes. Not only are the average salaries of researchers and young Italians lower, but the contracts governing the different types of researchers envisaged in Italy are almost all fixed-term contracts with peaks of considerable precariousness and low levels of social protection (social shock absorbers, maternity and sickness rights, pension contributions).

These contracts then continue for a long time, especially in universities and public research bodies, reaching extreme cases in which, almost at the forty-year threshold, there is no guarantee of a stable employment contract.

This aspect is also much more general than one might imagine, involving, albeit to a lesser extent from a temporal point of view, young people hired in the private sector; and also in this case, the Italian situation is out of place at the European level.

So, together with the wage issue, there is the contractual one. An effective response must be given quickly so that the precariousness is not only incoming, offloading the cost of the reforms and interventions necessary to make ends meet on the new generations.

It will be said that key factors such as the competitiveness of businesses, labor costs and competition from emerging countries play against this scheme of wage increases and contractual regulation. Factors that exist, but which should be tackled in a different way, focusing on innovation and research to improve the profitability of our industries rather than on cost containment, re-launching a continental challenge rather than entrenching in provincial corporatism and making an enormous pact generational, also putting on the plate some acquired rights of the fathers rather than seeing entire groups of children take the path of expatriation, abandoning any possibility of building concrete projects in this country a priori.

The contractual situation is a fairly recent fact, having transposed some modern directives regarding the flexibility of the labor market, but in a completely different way compared to other countries, therefore there are no comparisons with the previous history, also because the current system of Western work is dematerialized that is, it is almost no longer linked to mass production, but to an intellectual product .

As an authentic counterpart, Italy can boast unenviable primates, such as the highest average age of the political class or among private industry executives or among university professors or among the heads of departments of public research bodies . Compared to the European average, generational turnover is very slow and generally blocked. Looking at the European data on the distribution of the university teaching body, it is clear that up to the age of 35 it would be better to have a career in England, from 35 to 55 indifferently in Spain, France or Germany. In Italy, only after this age!

How did we arrive at all this given that the situation described is not verifiable assiduously in the history of these 150 years? Simply because, after the latest generational changes, the one following the student movements and the one that occurred after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet bloc, the Italian ruling class has become self-referential and the system has closed in on itself, instead of opening up to new instances, perhaps out of fear of not withstanding the impact of the new challenges. Perhaps we should really take up the spirit that animated many of our predecessors and throw ourselves into those enterprises that have positively marked the characteristics of our country.

In an attempt to remedy these three all-local oddities, salary, contractual and generational, it could be helpful, at least at an academic level, to introduce mechanisms of internal competition between Italian universities and public research bodies, avoiding comparing them to Public Administration subject to constant cuts due to the necessary containment of public expenditure imposed by the immense Italian public debt.

This action should be accompanied by an adequate evaluation of the research, by a prize for meritocracy, a prize that currently does not exist in fact, in economic and resource terms. And here, we come to another usual suspect: meritocracy, in fact, and the selection of the leading research class through competitions.

Without going too far, the scourge of fixed competitions is unfortunately on the agenda in the selection system at the base of the universities, whether it is a question of circumventing the mechanisms for making the internal candidate win or of real abuses of power to place relatives, friends and acquaintances, as recently highlighted by several journalistic investigations and by many publications in this regard. In all these cases, meritocracy is constantly ignored and overshadowed by other, certainly less noble and productive aspects. The result of this practice, which appears to be typically Italian and linked to this social context, translates into a further incentive for the best or those who are not resigned to the prevailing system of silence and co-optation to flee.

It has been highlighted several times how, in the face of these practices, the practice of insolvency hiring should be reformed, if not abolished. Apart from the intrinsic problems at the legislative level, it should be noted here that these approaches have more than anything else the will to perfect the method of evaluation and hiring, without however affecting the real underlying problem such as equal opportunities deriving from transparent and efficient and the elimination of abuses of power and patronage relationships. It would be enough simply to apply the law in force and demand that the regulations and sanctions are strictly respected.

In this framework, it must once again be noted how these problems are connected to that position of internal entrenchment which does not give space to those who are outside (outside the geographical boundaries, outside the restricted environment of the usual suspects, outside the logic of power ) to be able to express their potential. A entrenched position all connected to the last thirty years, there were no such evident traces of rigged or fixed competitions or non-rewarding of merit in other historical periods of our country. Another focal point, which will be mentioned at the end of this introduction, is given by the successive attempts at school and university reform that have taken place over the last few years and how this fits into the progress of this century and a half.

However, the problems of Italian research are not only subjective, therefore linked to what directly affects individuals such as salary, contract and criteria for hiring and career advancement. There are some objective data which are usually the most cited and most listened to when trying to frame a discourse on the reform of Italian research.

Firstly, in Italy there is an endemic scarcity of resources destined for research and education, which can be summarized in the paltry percentage of 1.1% of GDP destined for investments in research and development, compared to a European average of 2%. 3.5% of the United States and percentages between 4 and 5% of Asian countries such as China, India, Japan and South Korea. This Italian percentage does not seem destined to increase, thus disregarding what was ratified in the Lisbon Charter which placed the European target of 3% of GDP in resources allocated to research. On the contrary, the continuous cuts in public spending which also affect research institutions and universities only aggravate an already worrying situation in itself, starting a vicious circle such as the hiring freeze for young researchers which, consequently, causes a savage use of constant forms of precariousness.

To reinforce this state of insufficient funds, the zero contribution of the Italian entrepreneurial fabric contributes, a more unique than rare case in the panorama of advanced countries. This insignificant contribution has been attributed several times to the current micro-dimension of Italian companies, mainly small and very small enterprises that cannot afford any investment in research and development, to the failure of directives such as Basel 2 in Italy and to tax legislation, certainly not favorable the inclusion of research doctorates in private companies.

Again, that wasn't always the case. Our past formed by large companies that invested in research and education is a milestone in the improvement of the Italian schooling rate and living standards, as well as it was the driving force for social and income transitions, allowing for a series of subsequent improvements , like the famous post-war boom. Today, perhaps for the first time, children risk having a less rosy outlook than their fathers and this, not surprisingly, coincides with a closed vision of the enterprise and with completely laughable investments in research, as well as fueling that flight towards foreigner of brilliant minds.

This scarcity of investments in turn determines a delay or an absence of adequate infrastructures, such as the instrumentation necessary to be able to carry out research at an advanced level or, much more simply, the most suitable locations for individual laboratories.

Similarly, the difficulty of filing patents, of setting up new innovative companies through spin-offs and startups, of the still cumbersome exchange of skills between the academic world and the business world, have a negative impact on the competitiveness of Italy's economic, cultural and social system. If we really want to keep up with the other European partners, a shared effort by the public and private sectors is needed to increase investment in research and the degree of innovation.

Indeed, there is a positive correlation between investment in research, productivity levels and economic growth; the structural trend of the last fifteen years of low growth of the Italian economy is largely attributable to a progressive disinvestment in the areas of research and innovation.

In other words, investing money, both public and private, in research is not only useful to the community, but is economically more convenient than any other type of investment. The lack of foresight of the Italian ruling class is astounding and is largely attributable to