Virgo awarded the prize of the Festa di Scienza e di Filosofia

Today in Foligno during the 14th edition of “Festa di Scienza e di Filosofia – Virtute e Canoscenza” the LIGO – Virgo – KAGRA Collaboration received an award in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the first gravitational wave detection.

“The prize, instituted by the Laboratory of Experimental Sciences of Foligno,” said Pierluigi Mingarelli, director of the Laboratory, “is dedicated to all the scientists of the international collaboration who helped confirm the existence of gravitational waves 10 years ago.”

Massimo Carpinelli, professor at the University of Milan Bicocca and Director of the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), the institution that hosts the Virgo gravitational wave detector, Gianluca Gemme, researcher at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and spokesperson for the Virgo Collaboration, and Filippo Martelli, professor at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo and member of the Virgo Collaboration, collected the award on behalf of this community. They were presented with the editio princeps of the Divine Comedy.

The award presented today celebrates the last ten years of gravitational waves research, but also looks to the future of this field, represented in Europe by Einstein Telescope, the future gravitational wave detector currently being planned: one of the candidate sites to host it is in fact Italy once again, in particular a large area involving several municipalities in the province of Nuoro, Sardinia.

“We are honoured by the recognition that the Festival of Science and Philosophy and the city of Foligno have awarded to the Virgo International Collaboration,” said Gianluca Gemme. “This prize, in fact, emphasises the broader significance that great scientific endeavours, such as the observation of gravitational waves, can have for society, education and, I would say, for the entire human community. And thus reminds us of the great social and civil responsibility that always accompanies scientific research and our efforts to expand the boundaries of knowledge.”

The Science and Philosophy Festival – Virtute e Canoscenza (Virtue and Knowledge) aims to disseminate scientific culture, especially among the younger generations, and is intended to be an opportunity for scientists, philosophers, journalists and the public, especially young people, to discuss on scientific and philosophical themes of major interest. It is promoted and organised by the Laboratory of Experimental Sciences, in collaboration with the Municipality of Foligno, the Region of Umbria, the Rotary Club of Fabriano, the Municipality of Fabriano, and the Marche Region. In 2025, the Cultural Association for the Development of the Umbria-Marches Apennines was involved. The name ‘Virtute e Canoscenza’ is a tribute to Dante and humanity’s yearning to expand the horizons of knowledge. It is also a tribute to the first edition of the Divine Comedy, printed in Foligno in 1472.

Today, the Foligno Experimental Science Laboratory is a centre for research, dissemination and educational innovation in the scientific disciplines. A centre for training courses for teachers of national schools of all levels, it opens its Physics, Chemistry, Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Meteorology, Mathematics and Computer Science laboratories to children, young people and school students (from infancy to university), as well as the ‘Paolo Maffei’ Planetarium and the Botanical Garden at its disposal. Every year, the Laboratory of Experimental Sciences in Foligno organises the Science and Philosophy Festival, an opportunity for the most prestigious scientists and philosophers from all over the world to meet with a large audience and students from Italian schools.

EGO, the European Gravitational Observatory, located in the countryside near Pisa, is home to the Virgo interferometer, one of the three largest and most sensitive gravitational wave detectors in the world, capable of observing through these signals extraordinary phenomena in the deep Universe, such as the merging of black holes or stars. More than 900 scientists from over 150 institutions in 20 European countries are working on the Virgo experiment, but EGO’s main funders are: the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy, the NWO-I (Foundation for Scientific Research Institutes of the Netherlands) in the Netherlands, FWO (The Foundation for Research in Flanders) and FNRS (Fund for Scientific Research) in Belgium.