The International Conference on Transport Theory (ICTT) returned to Italy thirty years after the first Italian edition (Montecatini, 1985, which actually was the first edition outside the U.S.) and after two others that were also held in Italy (Riccione, 1993 and Torino, 2009). This time, it was the turn of southern Italy to host the 24th, specifically in Taormina, a small historical town on the east coast of the island of Sicily, located on a cliff above the sea and dominated by the Etna volcano.
Taormina, a destination for many tourists from all over the world for its landscape as well for its history, has hosted almost a hundred “transportists,” coming from Italy (42), USA (11), France (9), Sweden (8), Brazil (5), Germany (5) India (5), Spain (4), Russia (3), and also from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Pakistan, Switzerland.
Most of the participants were housed in the lovely Hotel Diodoro, with especially spectacular views of the nearby gardens and the pleasant coast, surmounted by Etna that loomed over the whole area. The conference banquet was held Wednesday night at the Hotel Diodoro which provided a delicious and nice dinner. The local organizers also offered a special event: a concert of the Galatea Ensemble, founded in 2013, composed of five young graduated musicians who believe in music as a social and cultural mission. The chosen repertoire, from classical music to the well-known film soundtrack by E. Morricone, has been greatly appreciated by the many congressmen that were present.
The meeting was opened, on Monday 7, by greetings from Vittorio Romano, the local organizer and Chairman of the Conference, together with Luigi Barletti.
Giovanni Frosali and Barry Ganapol then gave two short presentations illustrating a brief history of the series of the International Transport Theory Conferences. In particular, Giovanni Frosali read a message sent by Paul Zweifel, Emeritus at Virginia Tech and one of the founders of the series, that we wish to report here entirely.
To all the participants in ICTT 24. I'm so sorry that I am unable to join you this year. As you may or may not know, I was present at all but one of the previous 23 (I missed the one in Russia) and I was looking forward to this years. Taormina and Catania are two of my favorite localities in Italy; I have spent a lot of time there in the past and was looking forward to being there again. I fell in the kitchen of my home, fracturing my right ankle in the process. I spent over a month in hospital and rehab, and still can only walk with the aid of a walker. There is no way I could undertake even a short airplane flight, and a long one, as to Rome, would be unthinkable. Anyway, I'm 86 years old, and have lost touch with what's going on in the field of transport theory.
With all my best wishes to all the participants for an enjoyable and fruitful meeting, I greet you.
Paul Zweifel
P.S. […] Let me just add that the idea behind the formation of the meetings was to gather together scientists and engineers working in disparate physical areas but who used, or could use similar mathematical methods to find solutions. In the early days of ICTT (1969 was the first year) this meant, primarily singular integral equations and their spectral properties. This seems to have mutated to Monte Carlo, judging from the last two meetings, Portland and Santa Fe, that I was able to attend (a result perhaps of improved computer capabilities and a shift from the theoretical to the practical in the participants' thinking). But I hope you will all remember the original idea, and try to work out how mathematical methods of solution can carry over to many different physical situations.
It has to be remarked that, since the beginning of the biennial series of transport theory meetings, the first of which was held on the campus of Virginia Tech in 1969, the 24th edition has been the first where none of the founders were present, which makes Paul Zweifel's message particularly significant and touching.
The ICTT-24 was characterized by a large number of participants and therefore the agenda of the meeting was quite crowded: 21 oral presentations of 30 minutes and 50 presentations of 20 minutes. The result was an interesting and at the same time full of many, albeit mostly high quality, papers.
In contrast to the 26 papers presented in the first meeting in 1969, which was attended almost entirely by scholars from the U.S., the present conference featured 71 oral presentations by scholars from fifteen countries. This growth in both number and geographical distribution of the participants attests to the still-growing interest in the theoretical and applied aspects of the theory of transport phenomena.
In the recent past there has been also a broadening of the scopes of transport theory, and the interests of its community has turned to different specific projects in many different fields of mathematics, physics and engineering. The ICTT meetings have always helped to bring together researchers coming from different areas, and, also this time in Taormina, the researchers attending the conference have benefited by face-to-face interaction with colleagues in related fields.
The talks were organized into seven thematic sessions, namely:
Transport of neutrons / Reactor physics (19 presentations);
Radiative transfer (13 presentations);
Plasma physics (4 presentations);
Transport of charged particles / Semiconductors (14 presentations);
Quantum transport (5 presentations);
Kinetic theory of classical particles / Continuum derived models (11 presentations);
Kinetic models in bio and social sciences (5 presentations).
The oral presentations were complemented by 13 posters, which were posted in the corridor of the Hotel Diodoro. This series of conferences, called for a long time Blacksburg Conferences, has grown in number, geographical spread and scientific scope.
We believe that the 24th edition in Taormina was a testiment once more to the vitality of the transport theory community, as well as its capability of carrying on the more traditional research fields along with new themes, in response to the continuous renewal of science and, in general, society.