News & Events

Change Makers new podcast

📍Torino, 25 September 2026

Listen to Marta on the Change Makers podcast!

Marta Tuninetti is the guest of the first episode of Change Makers, the new Politecnico di Torino podcast co-funded by the European Commission. The series gives voice to researchers working on international projects that could change how we live, move, take care of ourselves and look to the future. In the episode, Marta shares her research journey and the vision behind TIP-FRESH. The podcast was launched on 25th September at the European Researchers' Night in Turin.

🎧 Listen to the episode

Meet us @ IDRA2026!

📍Napoli (Italy), 9th-11th September 2026

We're excited to present our research at the IDRA2026 conference. Come find us in:

Session S2-05 – Approcci multi-inter e transdisciplinari per la gestione delle risorse idriche
Session S2-03 – Approcci socio-idrologici per la gestione del Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem-Climate Nexus

We look forward to sharing our work and connecting with fellow researchers!

Amazing workshop at World Water Week 2026!

📍Stockholm (Sweden), 23rd-27th August 2026

Together with colleagues from Danone, Quantis, and the Global Commission on the Economics of Water we hold a workshop about water resilience in food systems.

We presented examples using case studies and shared a methodology to assess water resilience and terrestrial moisture recycling at the company scale.

Contributors:

Marie-Anne Paulin, Paulina Kaczmarek, Nathalie Dörfliger, Anna Dupont, Elena De Petrillo, Andrea Barresi, Francesco Laio and Marta Tuninetti.

Hands-on training at OpenGeoHub's
Earth Observation Summer School 2026

📍Istanbul (Turkey), 17th-21st August 2026

Francesco Semeria took part in the Earth Observation Summer School: “Data Science for Earth Observation”, hosted at Istanbul Technical University.

The 5-day summer school brought together hands-on training in Python, R, and Julia for Earth Observation and geospatial data science, alongside expert talks, hackathons, and opportunities for networking and knowledge exchange.

Poster Presentation @ Regional Mountain Conference 2026!

📍Obergurgl (Austria), 5th-8th July 2026

In a session dedicated to mountain droughts, Vittorio Giordano and Nike Chiesa Turiano presented a poster on the propagation of atmospheric drought through Lagrangian tracking of water vapor. Using the UTrack model, they reconstructed the trajectories of moist air masses to understand how moisture deficits travel from one region to another, contributing to the formation and propagation of drought conditions.

Hosting Prof. Kyle Frankel Davis at our Lab.

📍Politecnico di Torino, Turin, June 2026

Welcoming one of the TIP-FRESH scientific collaborators, Prof. Kyle Frankel Davis from the University of Delaware (US) to discuss about the drought sensitivity of crops in agricultural production, animal livestock systems, and participatory approaches in sustainable food systems.

Thanks, Kyle, come back soon!

We had great scientific time at EGU26!

📍Vienna (Austria), 3rd-8th May 2026

The EGU General Assembly 2026 is one of the biggest gatherings of geoscientists on the planet, and we couldn't be more excited to be part of it. From land-atmosphere interactions to virtual water trade and enhanced weathering, our team brought contributions to five section during the week and had chance to discuss research ideas with old and new friends!

Hosting Prof. Lan Wang-Erlandsson and Monica Scatasta at our Lab and at Biennale Tecnologia.

📍Politecnico di Torino, Turin, April 2026

We had the pleasure of hosting Professor Lan Wang-Erlandsson from the Stockholm Resilience Centre at our Lab for a stimulating Friday of discussions. The visit was a great opportunity to share the ongoing research activities of our group, with a particular focus on green water metrics and their role in quantifying environmental impacts, risks, and the value of nature.

📍Sala dei Mappamondi, Accademia delle Scienze, Turin, April 2026

As part of Biennale Tecnologia, we were also glad to host Monica Scatasta from the European Investment Bank, who joined Prof. Wang-Erlandsson in a dialogue on water resilience and transition — a timely exchange on one of the most pressing challenges of our time.

A sincere thank you to Lan and Monica for the engaging discussions and the insights shared with our team and the citizens.

Individual countries diet transitions.

New paper out on dietary transition!

📰 Environmental Research: Food Systems, 12 February 2026

Countries with rising incomes typically undergo a nutrition transition, marked by increasing consumption of animal-sourced foods and declining intakes of cereals and other plant-based products. However, large-scale, data-driven assessments of how diets worldwide align with this transition remain scarce. Here, we analyse dietary regimes in 188 countries, from 1970 to 2021, covering 370 food products, and identify a nutrition transition occurring at the global scale. On average, every tenfold increase in a country’s per capita gross domestic product corresponds to a 13% rise in the dietary share of calories supplied by animal products and to a 15% decline in the share supplied by cereals. Nonetheless, in several high-income countries, such as Canada, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the UK, the dietary composition diverges from global trends, exhibiting declining caloric shares from animal-sourced foods alongside rising contributions from cereals and plant-based products.

Read the paper

OECD technical workshop on Water Risks and Agriculture

📍Paris, November 2025

Marta Tuninetti and Elena De Petrillo participated in the technical workshop organised by the OECD as invited experts to discuss state-of-the-art, ready-to-use tools and approaches for anticipating and monitoring water risks for agricultural production. The workshop brought together OECD delegates and a broad range to set the path for embedding evidence into policy and decision-making processes. The outcomes will inform an OECD Policy Paper to be published in summer 2026.

Seminar - UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Development

📍Turin, September 2025

The seminar was part of the National Program of Recovery and Resilience (PNRR) activities, organised by the Italian Network of Artistic Research and the World Art Education Expo 2026 at the Accademia Albertina in Turin. It was organised in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Development and Territorial Management at the University of Turin and the PhD programme in New Media and Critical-Curatorial Practices of Contemporary Creation at the Accademia Albertina. Elena De Petrillo was an invited speaker and brought scientific insights from socio-hydrological research applied to food system transitions.