On Wednesday, 11 February 2026, the award ceremony for the second edition of the “Giovanni Pastore” Master’s Degree Thesis Award was held at the EN:Lab building of the Department of Energy at the Politecnico di Milano.

The “Giovanni Pastore” Master’s Degree Thesis Award was established thanks to a donation from Giovanni Pastore’s family, in collaboration with the Department of Energy, in memory of the alumnus and researcher, who earned his PhD in 2012 with a dissertation on the behaviour of fission gases in nuclear fuel. After completing his doctorate, he pursued his career at Idaho National Laboratory and at University of Tennessee Knoxville in the United States, before returning to Italy to join Newcleo, making a significant contribution to nuclear research with a strong international impact.

The award, worth €2,500 gross, is granted annually to the best Master’s thesis on nuclear fuel and fission gas behaviour and is open to graduates of the Master’s Degree in Nuclear Engineering at Politecnico di Milano.

For the 2025–2026 academic year, the selection committee awarded the prize to Elisa Cappellari for her thesis entitled:

“Towards physics-based description of fuel fragmentation: fission gas behaviour at grain boundaries”