DISCA intends to educate skilled researchers able to positively contribute the Chemical Sciences advancement, in Academia and at the Industrial level, or, alternatively, to advancements of Environmental Sciences to the protection of natural and anthropic environment and land.

Two main specialized curricula are presently available: “Energy and Health”, and “Environment and Land”.
The education of the PhD students, within the different curricula, will be promoted through a constant experimental research activity and a suitable specialized educational track, aiming at obtaining the maximum capacity in self-managing research within a competing international framework.

DISCA will also promote multidisciplinary studies, which, in the complex landscape of exact sciences and of their applications, will constitute a well-defined added value for new professionals. In order to reach a full scientific maturity, the PhD student, during a three years project, develops, under the guidance of a tutor, an intense research activity on an innovative topic, starting from a clear definition of the goals to be reached and, particularly, of the advances with respect of the state-of-the-art knowledge. In line with the most modern educational and scientific practice, part of the research will be performed in a foreign Country, raising the PhD student awareness of the wider international context and augmenting its expertise and its abilities.

The different topics and scientific areas of DISCA will also benefit from the presence, at University of Insubria, of laboratories and equipment dedicated to Chemical and Environmental Sciences, as well as by the presence of many Funding Agencies interested in scientific research and technology transfer. These areas of interest include: Analytical, Physical, Inorganic. Organic, Industrial and Environmental Chemistry, Material Sciences, Earth Sciences, Animal and Plant Biology, Ecology, Occupational Health, Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering.

Within this PhD Course, no discrimination of gender, age, nationality, religion, ethnical origin and social class will ever apply.

Dust, dust deposits and soils
first year
second year
third year Seminar activity / lectures as part of the PhD Course in Dust, dust deposits and soils; Teacher Onn CROUVI
Lecture topics:
· Introduction to dust cycle on Earth
· Dust emission mechanisms and dust source geomorphology
Loess types, silt generation, and paleo-climatic data
· Dust in soils
The importance of particle size distribution in dust and loess studies
The Israeli case study - The Negev loess: from Quaternary dust sink to current dust source
Dust and loess in Italy
The course includes a one day field trip to the loess sites of the Po Plain

Data science applications in R
first year
second year
third year Teacher: Damiano PREATONI
Objectives: to know the fundamental principles of data manipulation and to have the ability to program data management and analysis procedures using the R - RStudio work environment.
Program: introduction to programming, the S language, the work environment (IDE Integrated Development Environment) RStudio. Basic techniques of data management: import, export, normalization of tables. Exploratory analysis and graphic analysis. Use of notebooks and literate programming.
Students are strongly encouraged to prepare and share practical data analysis cases, related to their research activity, which can be used as a case study.
Recommended books: R Core Development Team, 2022. An Introduction to R. Notes on R: A Programming Environment for Data Analysis and Graphics. Version 4.2.0 (2022-04-22). https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-intro.pdf
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

VIBRATIONAL AND ELECTRONIC SPECTROSCOPIES FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF METAL-ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS
first year
second year
third year Teacher: Jenny G. VITILLO
Objectives: The course aims at providing an introduction on the use of spectroscopic techniques for the characterization of MOFs and of their surface.
Program: Introduction to MOFs. Vibrational and rotational spectroscopies. Basic principles. IR, Raman and INS. Bulk and surface spectroscopies. Probe molecules. Electron spectroscopies. Basic principles. UV-Vis, XAS and XES. Relevant examples from the literature.
Teaching materials: Recent papers from the literature; slides.
CHEMICAL SCIENCES
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

BIOACCUMULATION OF ORGANIC CONTAMINANTS IN PLANTS
first year
second year
third year Teacher: Elisa TERZAGHI
Objectives: The course will provide basic knowledge about the mechanisms that regulate the bioaccumulation of organic contaminants in plants, with particular attention to the existing predictive approaches for the estimation of bioaccumulation from air and soil.
Program: 1) Organic contaminants and their environmental fate; 2) Processes and parameters that influence the bioaccumulation of organic contaminants in plants; 3) Predictive model for bioaccumulation of organic contaminants in plants; 4) Case studies about bioaccumulation from air and soil.
Teaching material:
- Thibodeaux, L.J., Mackay, D. (Eds.), 2011. Handbook of chemical mass transport in the environment. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA
- Slides and scientific papers
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

NANOMATERIALS: MULTI-SCALE CHARACTERIZATION THROUGH TOTAL SCATTERING TECHNIQUES AND STRUCTURE-PROPERTY RELATIONSHIPS
first year
second year
third year Objectives: The course aims to introduce characterization methods of nanoscale materials based on unconventional X-ray total scattering techniques, illustrate their application to different classes of materials (metals, oxides, semiconductors, bioceramics, perovskites, drugs, and composites of various kinds), and discuss the dependence of functional properties on structural ones.
Program: The materials engineered at the nanometric scale represent very complex systems from the point of view of the chemical-physical characterization and show deviations from the corresponding bulk materials both for the innovative functionalities induced by the small size, and for their atomic arrangement, conditioned by the high surface ratio -volume is typically influenced by appropriate surface control.
Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies nowadays offer applications in the most varied fields, ranging from electronics to sensors to technologically advanced materials, from the energy sector to the environmental one, from medicine to agro-food.
The course offers an introduction to the most advanced X-ray scattering techniques, of which experimental and modeling aspects will be treated aimed at the quantitative characterization of nanomaterials in terms of structure, defects, size and shapes, their distributions, surface effects, quantification. of nanophases. Cases of 

application for various classes of materials (oxides: TiO2, Fe3O4 / γ-Fe2O3; semiconductors: PbX (X = S, Se); peroviskiti [APbX3 (A = Cs, FA, MA), (X = Cl, Br, I) ], ceramics (biomimetic apatites) and composites (mineralized collagen; TiO2 / SiO2; Pt / SiO2); the relationships between structural and functional properties will be discussed.
The final part of the course will show the use of open source software for the analysis of a total scattering data collected with synchrotron light.
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

MATERIALS FOR SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION OF HYDROGEN
first year
second year
third year Teacher: Vladimiro Dal Santo
Objectives: To provide an overview of the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier and to provide specific information on innovative materials for its production.
Program: Introduction to hydrogen as a sustainable energy vector (traditional vectors, alternative vectors, sustainable mobility, and stationary systems). Materials for the production, storage and use of hydrogen. Insights on materials for production: i. heterogeneous catalysts for renewables reforming, pyrolysis, partial oxidation; ii. photo- and photoelectron-catalysts for the production of solar fuels; iii. Electro-catalysts for electrolysers (proton and anionic exchange membrane systems).
Teaching materials: Papers and reviews taken from recent literature; slides (pdf).
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

WASTE, BIOMASS AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY
first year
second year
third year Teacher: Elena Cristina RADA
Objectives: The course aims at illustrating the potentiality of the research sector in the evolution of circular economy applied to organic (biodegradable) and inorganic waste.
Program: Introduction to the principles of Circular Economy. Reduction and reuse. Waste composition and amount (municipal solid waste and special waste). Indices and indicators. Role of waste to energy options. Virtuous examples. Trends and targets of the research in this sector: recycling vs downcycling; end of waste; limits and potentialities of the context. Economic and environmental sustainability.
The course will last 12 hours.
Teaching materials: slides (pdf)
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Delivered in English if foreign students are present
8. Non-invasive characterization of materials 12
first year
second year
third year Non-invasive characterization of materials
Teacher: Laura Rampazzi
Objectives: The course provides basic knowledge of the main non-invasive techniques to explore their use in the environmental and forensic fields and in the analysis and diagnostics of works of art.
Program: Introduction to non-invasive analytical methods. Description of main spectroscopic, X-ray, photographic, multispectral non-invasive techniques. Determination of materials and study of surface decay. Presentation and discussion of case studies.
Teaching materials: Scientific articles and reviews on the subject provided by the teacher.
CHEMICAL SCIENCES
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

MATHEMATICAL AND NUMERICAL METHODS IN NATURAL SCIENCES
first year
second year
third year MATHEMATICAL AND NUMERICAL METHODS IN NATURAL SCIENCES
Teacher: Massimo MELLA
Objectives: To provide basic elements for the mathematical and numerical analysis of the properties of systems of interest
chemist, physicist, and for the natural sciences.
Program: Ordinary differential equations, with application to chemical kinetics and to the transfer of
power; partial differential equations, with application to the theory of matter transport; methods of
functional approximation, with applications to models of classical and quantum physical systems; methods of
numerical integration for one-dimensional definite integrals, ordinary differential equations and them
systems; Monte Carlo integration with application to diffusion and models of polymer molecules;
solution of the equations of motion and their application to systems of chemical relevance.
Texts: Course notes.
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

Volcanotectonics and neotectonics for geothermal exploration and geological hazard assessment
first year
second year
third year Objectives: geological study of the interactions among crustal
structures, volcanic activity and hydrothermal fluids, and their
effects on the shaping of the Earth surface, characteristics of geothermal systems and neotectonics in active volcanic and seismic
areas.
Program: the geological study of the interactions between volcanic
processes and tectonic activity have reached significant progress in recent years, determining the need for a thorough review of some concepts of structural geology, geomorphology and volcanotectonics. In
addition, the availability of LiDAR systems and high-resolution optical satellite images in stereo configuration, and the possibility
of analyzing in 3D Geographic Information Systems the geomorphological, geological, remote sensing, borehole and geophysical
data, constitute new fundamental tools for understanding the geology of active areas and the interactions between geological structures and magmatic / hydrothermal fluids. This has substantial implications for
the development of geological-structural models of volcanic and seismic areas for, both, the assessment of geologic hazards and the geothermal exploration.
Material and textbooks:
ESRI ArcGIS Desktop / Pro
Robert J. Twiss, Eldridge M. Moores. Structural Geology. W. H.
Freeman, 2006. ISBN 0716749513, 532 pp.
Agust Gudmundsson. Rock Fractures in Geological Processes. Cambridge
University Press, 2011. ISBN 1139500694.
Delivered in English if foreign students are present

You can enroll after a public competition for qualifications and examinations. Please see:
call for admissions (PDF)
Online application
Online application to PhD Programs guide (PDF)
For all information, please see also:
italian call for admissions

Coordinator
MICHETTI ALESSANDRO MARIA
Duration: 3 years

Italian version