Industrial Science Highlights

Studying and preserving ancient artefacts made from organic materials is far from straightforward. Objects such as ancient leather, textiles or human remains are often extremely fragile and can easily be damaged by light, humidity or handling. Over centuries, their internal structure slowly changes, but understanding how and why this happens is difficult — especially when the objects are unique and cannot be sampled or altered.

Understanding how ancient human populations moved, lived, and interacted remains one of the central questions of anthropology. For researchers working with human remains Museo e Istituto Fiorentino di Preistoria, this task presents specific challenges: the materials are very fragile, irreplaceable, and protected as cultural heritage. Advancing knowledge must therefore be balanced with strict standards of conservation and ethical responsibility.

For innovative companies, moving beyond established research methods often requires access to tools, expertise, and networks that are not available in-house. This is where ISIS@MACH ITALIA plays a crucial role—helping companies explore advanced analytical techniques, understand their potential value, and translate curiosity into structured experimentation. One such example is Arterra Bioscience S.p.A., an Italian biotechnology company.

Cosmic radiation might seem like a problem for satellites, but it increasingly affects the electronics we depend on every day. For Francesco Pintacuda, Radiation-Hardened Design Manager at STMicroelectronics, understanding how cosmic-ray–generated neutrons interact with modern semiconductor devices is now essential for the future of electric mobility, renewable energy systems and even emerging electric aircraft.

A collaboration between Arterra Bioscience S.p.A., the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source and ISIS@MACH ITALIA  is opening new avenues for understanding how natural cosmetic ingredients interact with the complex layered structure of human skin. For Arterra Bioscience—an Italian biotech company specialising in plant-derived actives—this partnership offers access to analytical tools that go beyond traditional biochemical and cellular methods.

Using ChipIr, researchers have studied how ultralow power system-on-chip is affected by the neutron flux in the atmosphere. This study may be helpful in future design of such devices to be more resilient to particle hits. The type of SoC in this study is a prototype microcontroller designed for IoT battery-operated systems.

Researchers have completed an in-depth characterisation of the thermal neutron cross sections of all twenty amino acids, developing a new model that can be easily applied to other organic materials. The knowledge of the scattering cross section of amino acids is important when investigating the interaction of neutrons on biological systems during medical procedures such as Boron Neutron Capture Therapy.

New research from our ISIS@MACH ITALIA collaboration has uncovered information on the hydration levels in a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts. In this ​paper researchers used a variety of neutron and laboratory experiments to investigate these effects on a collection of Egyptian leathers dated to 2700 BC – 600 AD.

Scientists from Rome Tor Vergata and ISIS have used the Vesuvio spectrometer to unravel part of the mystery behind the physical and chemical conditions of the Mariana Trench – one of the most extreme environments in the world. By using deep inelastic neutron scattering (DINS) they were able to measure the kinetic energy of the hydrogen atoms in the water under these conditions.