On Monday, 2 February, the six professional profiles selected by the interuniversity consortium Unitel Sardegna formally took up their posts. They will be responsible for outreach activities in the local area related to the Einstein Telescope (ET) project.
Welcoming them in the council chamber of the Municipality of Lula were the mayors of Lula and Nuoro, Mario Calia and Emiliano Fenu; the Region’s consultant on the Einstein Telescope, Raffaele Marras, the Director of the Cagliari section of INFN, Alessandro Cardini; the Director of INAF – Cagliari Astronomical Observatory, Federica Govoni; INGV researcher Carlo Giunchi; the Scientific Coordinator of ET Italia, Domenico D’Urso; the Vice-Rectors for Research of the Universities of Sassari and Cagliari, Giuseppe Pulina and Luciano Colombo; and the Commissioner of the Sardinia Historical and Environmental Geomining Park, Roberto Curreli. The day continued with a visit to the mining museum and to the Sos Enattos mine, where some of the instruments used by scientists over recent years are located.
The call for applications, for which 126 applications were received, was part of the initiatives aimed at promoting and enhancing the candidacy of the Sos Enattos site (Lula) to host the infrastructure. The activity is coordinated by the Presidency of the Regional Government, in collaboration with the Universities of Cagliari and Sassari and the research bodies INFN, INAF, and INGV. These institutions foresee the opening of two local information offices in Nuoro and Lula, whose setup will be managed by INFN and completed in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the selected outreach officers will undertake a short training period.
Specifically, the selected professionals will be responsible for scientific outreach, territorial mediation, and support for community dialogue in the area. They will operate in coordination with trainers from UniCa and UniSS and with the group of researchers and technicians involved in the project.