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.

High on the slopes of Volcán Wolf in the Galápagos lives one of the rarest reptiles on Earth — a large pink land iguana that Charles Darwin himself completely missed. Today, this remarkable animal is at the centre of a research project that brings together field biology, genetics, ancient DNA, and international scientific collaboration through ISIS MACH Italia. The work is helping scientists uncover its past and protect its future.

Using ChipIr, researchers investigated how an ultralow-power system-on-chip responds to neutron flux similar to that found in the atmosphere. The study focused on the PLSense PLS10, a prototype microcontroller designed for battery-operated IoT systems, and explored its vulnerability to radiation-induced bit flips. The findings could help inform the future design of low-power devices that are more resilient to particle hits.

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 revealed new insights into hydration and preservation in ancient Egyptian leather artefacts. Combining neutron experiments with complementary laboratory techniques, the team studied leather objects dating from around 2700 BC to 600 AD to better understand how they were made, how they changed over time, and how they have been preserved.

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.