Collaborations with Sweden in S&T are governed by the Agreement on Cultural, Educational, Scientific and Technological Cooperation signed in Rome on 11/29/2001 and in force since 2007.
The last Executive Program with Sweden, valid for the period 2018-2020, and extended until 2022 due to pandemic, was signed in Stockholm on 28 March 2018. Under this bilateral program, eight bilateral projects have been funded in the following areas: nanoscience, neuroscience, cultural heritage, cyber security, clean energy and “aging society”. Contacts are in progress for the renewal of the Executive Program for the period 2023-2025.
The previous Executive Programme with Sweden, signed in Stockholm on March 28, 2018 and valid for the period 2018-2020 was extended until 2022. The new IV Executive Protocol was signed, again in Stockholm, and led to the introduction for the first time with Sweden of the Projects of “Great Relevance”. The protocol for the three-year period 2024-2026 has funded eight projects in four thematic areas:
- Life sciences (molecular medicine, e-health & medical technologies; pharmaceutical chemistry & technology)
- Physics, accelerator technologies, Synchrotron Radiation and Neutron scattering researches with accelerators
- Polar Sciences (Arctic and sub-Arctic regions)
- Information and Communication Technologies
According to the database of the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR), there are about 80 memoranda and agreements among Italian and Swedish research centers and university institutions in the field of science and technology, involving about forty Italian universities. In addition, considering bilateral and multilateral activities the number of Italian universities and institutions involved in academic agreements, e.g., recognition of double degrees, doctorates and ERASMUS agreements, and contracts linked to funded European projects, this figure is much larger.
Among the bilateral collaborations, we have to mention that between the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and its Swedish counterpart, the Swedish National Space Board, in the field of satellite observation, the protocol signed by the CNR and the Research Institute of Sweden (RISE) on research and ICT applications and broadband connections and the most recent Memorandum of Understanding for monitoring solar emissions in the Swedish Arctic for applications in solar physics and space weather (2024). The Italian-Swedish collaboration (INAF, University of Milan, Swedish Space Agency and SSC) will carry out joint research, knowledge and technology exchanges to exploit innovative data analysis techniques for the identification and study of solar characteristics and phenomenology.
In this area, an important cooperation between Italy and Sweden occurs at the European Spallation Source (ESS), an initiative considered strategic by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). Italy is among the founding countries of ESS (http://europeanspallationsource.se/) together with Sweden, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland and Switzerland. Currently, 13 member countries, more than 40 European partner institutions and more than 130 institutions from all over the world collaborate according to the in-kind model, contribute to this research infrastructure. The scientific director of the facility is at present the Italian Giovanna Fragneto.
Italy contributes to ESS mainly through the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the National Research Council (CNR). The Polytechnic of Milan, that of Turin, the University of Brescia, and that of Florence, the National Council of Engineers, the University Consortium, the Interuniversity Magnetic Resonance of Metallo Protein Consortium, the Trieste Synchrotron Laboratory and the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology also contribute to the project. The importance of this infrastructure is witnessed by the ceremony held on November 15, 2018 when the President of the Republic and the King of Sweden assisted to the installation of the first component necessary to generate the proton beam of the ESS, a device built and assembled in the INFN laboratory (LNS) in Catania.
This new neutron source under construction in Lund will be competitive and certainly more performing than the neutron sources currently available in China, Japan, UK. When completed, the ESS will make available to the European and international scientific community a large, unique research facility to investigate materials using neutrons. This infrastructure will guarantee new research opportunities not only in fundamental physics, materials science and life sciences, but also in the fields of energy, environmental technologies, and cultural heritage; a scientific infrastructure of crucial importance to keep Europe at the forefront of research and to support its industrial competitiveness.
Italy and Sweden are both Observer countries in the SESAME Project in Jordan (https://www.sesame.org.jo), the only operational research infrastructure in the Middle East, an extraordinary multilateral initiative recognized by UNESCO that both countries support with great commitment. Italy participates also as one of the observer members in the Arctic Council (https://www.arctic-council.org/), the international forum that discusses the problems of Arctic governments and populations living in the Arctic of which Sweden is a permanent member. The scientific commitment of Italian researchers in the Arctic in areas like chemistry and physics of the environment, marine biology, climatology, and medicine is widely recognized.
Also in the multilateral field, we have to underline the longstanding bilateral and multilateral scientific collaborations within CERN (of which both countries were among the country founders in 1953), the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) [https://www.skao.int/] and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) [https://www.eso.org/public/].