Matteo Passoni from the Department of Energy is one of the 166 winners of the ERC Proof of Concept 2022, the €150,000 grant awarded by the European Research Council to reward ideas and proposals that have the potential to lead to a marketable product.

Thanks to the grant, Prof. Passoni and his team will spend 18 months developing the PANTANI project (Proton, electron And neutron sources for non-destructive Testing ANd Investigations and treatment of materials), which aims to design a compact multi-beam laser source, more flexible and cheaper than existing solutions, for use in numerous applications of industrial and social relevance, such as the analysis of materials of historical and artistic interest, environmental monitoring, the sterilisation of biomedical instruments and the detection of illegal substances in containers at airports and customs.