03/09/2026
☄️ Almost one and a half million euros to carry out research into one of the most extreme states of matter, which exists only in star explosions: neutrino plasma.
With the NEPTUNE project, Damiano Fiorillo, a researcher in the Physics area at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, is among the winners of the prestigious Starting Grant scheme run by the ERC – the European Research Council, the European Union’s leading organisation for supporting frontier research.
His project has been awarded funding of 1.495.750 euros over a five-year period. Of the more than 4.000 projects submitted in response to the ERC call for proposals, only 8.8 per cent were selected for funding.
The NEPTUNE project aims to provide the theoretical tools needed to interpret neutrino signals from the next supernova to occur in the Milky Way. A supernova is a much-anticipated event: it offers an extraordinary opportunity to study matter under the most extreme conditions in the Universe.
«NEPTUNE will develop a new way of looking at dense neutrino plasmas and the fields through which they interact» Fiorillo explains. «ERC funding will enable us to build an international research team at GSSI, bringing together expertise in neutrino and plasma physics: two fields that have long seemed entirely unrelated, but that must now be combined to prepare for the next nearby supernova explosion».
