MUSA - Multilayered Urban Sustainability Action focuses on the sustainable development of Italy’s main metropolitan area, which is among the top in Europe in terms of GDP.
This area is home to a wide variety of high-value-added manufacturing activities, advanced services, and financial sectors.
Why an innovation ecosystem?
MUSA aims creating the conditions to facilitate the transition of the urban environment towards a sustainable innovation ecosystem through actions that address various environmental and social risk factors, providing local institutions with solid foundations for evidence-based policies.
The ecosystem approach considers the collective knowledge, skills, perspectives, and interests of all the stakeholders present in the territory (public institutions, civil society associations, research centers, and businesses) and their relationships.
The main resource behind the project is a partnership of scientific and industrial excellence, with complementary knowledge and expertise that will help tackle this ambitious path.
MUSA is organized into SPOKEs as outlined in this diagram.
The Department of Physics is involved in 4 SPOKEs: 1, 3, 5, and 6.
Spoke 1 - Urban Regeneration City of Tomorrow
This spoke features a Joint Lab with the aerospace industry Thales Alenia Space Italia. It develops space technologies with multidisciplinary applications, particularly in digital electronics (innovative onboard computers) and analog electronics (ultra-scaled MEMS technology miniature accelerometers), microfluidics applications, and mission studies for the calibration of ground-based radio telescopes.
Spoke 3 - Deep Tech: Entrepreneurship & Technology Transfer
Two Joint Labs have been activated in this spoke with companies INFINEON and HUAWEI. The goal is to establish permanent infrastructures with these industrial partners to support both academic research and the creation of high-tech startups that develop innovative product lines. Specifically, with INFINEON, semiconductor products are being developed focusing on high efficiency to reduce energy consumption. With HUAWEI, the aim is to develop microwave and millimeter-wave devices. In this regard, at the WELab, specialized equipment is used to characterize ultra-high- frequency circuital elements, creating an accurate library for designing integrated circuits up to 200 GHz.
Spoke 5 – Sustainable Fashion, Luxury, and Design
In this spoke, the Department of Physics is active through actions related to the plasma surface treatment of special fabrics for fashion and high-tech purposes, aiming at enhancing comfort, fit, and water repellency.
Spoke 6 – Innovation for Sustainable and Inclusive Societies
Inclusivity and sustainability also pass through cultural initiatives. In this sense, as part of this SPOKE, we have initiated continuous training for teachers at all school levels (from kindergarten to high school) in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) disciplines, inspired by the evocative theme of the sky. This initiative has trained over 200 teachers and 6,000 students within the Milan network and its surrounding areas. Additionally, an exhibition titled “Sky Observers: Italian Stories of Science, Technology, and People,” in collaboration with Thales, has been set up at the central library of the university.