Maria Yzuel celebrates Denardo's contribution to training hundreds of students and professors in optics.
 
Prof. Gallieno Denardo did an enormous amount of work organizing activities in optics and lasers at the ICTP. Since 1985, colleges and schools in optics have been held each year to train PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and young professors, mainly from developing countries. Some students and young researchers from developed countries also participated in the school seminars. The collaboration of professors and students from different countries has proved to be very fruitful.

About 80 people typically participate in the colleges, and more recently the number has been close to 100. Some 75% of attendees are from developing countries and most of them are fully funded by the ICTP. Denardo organized the colleges and took care of the financial support of the students until his death in July.

The faculty - that is lecturers and directors - includes a much smaller percentage of scientists from developing countries. Denardo always tried to have some lecturers and, if possible, a director from those countries. The academic level of the schools is high. The average scientific level of the participants is a PhD. Participants are selected based on merit and also on a balanced geographical distribution. Mainly young scientists are invited. These relationships continue for more than one year (i.e. individuals are often invited to attend colleges in more than one year) to create a link between their institutions and the ICTP, and also between scientists from different developing countries. The college offers opportunities to meet people working in the same field, sometimes from the same country or region. Much collaboration among scientists in developing countries stemmed from their meetings at the the ICTP colleges.

Moreover, the colleges provide an opportunity to meet the ICTP coordinators of the external activities that take place in developing countries with the ICTP's support. In this way the ICTP is the place where coordinators of different optics projects meet, which stimulates the networking of optics activities in the different regions.

Denardo was also active in the Trieste System for Optical Sciences and Applications, the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), Optics within Life Sciences, ICO, the Optical Society of America, the European Optical Society and the Italian Society of Optics and Photonics participates in the group. As the SPIE representative on the TSOSA board since 2004, I know the work developed by Denardo. I was deeply impressed by his enthusiasm and organizational abilities, as well as by the influence of his initiatives in training hundreds of scientists and keeping fruitful scientific links between the ICTP and academic and research groups in developing countries.

In 2005 the SPIE Educator Award committee and the SPIE board of directors recognized Denardo for his outstanding contribution to training in optics hundreds of postdoctoral students and professors, mainly from developing countries, by organizing international schools and colleges at the ICTP for 20 years. In an article that appeared in oemagazine (June/July 2005), Denardo wanted to share the award with the ICTP. He said: "I feel that the ICTP, together with me, deserves this honour." He cited the important support of the ICTP director, Prof. Katepalli Sreenivasan. "Without the ICTP I couldn't have done anything," he said. Both Denardo and the the ICTP activities in optics and lasers deserved the award.

SPIE CEO Dr Eugene Arthurs presents the SPIE Educator Award to Gallieno Denardo at the 2006 Winter College.

The 2007 Winter College on Optics and Photonics. Left to right: M J Yzuel, G Denardo, S V Boriskina (ICO/ICTP Award 2007), A Consortini, I Ashraf Zahid, M L Calvo and A Wagué.

All of us will miss Prof. Gallieno Denardo and will always remember him. I am sure that the ICTP will continue the enthusiastic collaboration with international societies, to continue the legacy of Gallieno.

Maria J Yzuel, SPIE vice-president (2005).