After an initial setup phase, including the creation of a comprehensive website and Call for Proposals, INFN launched two application calls in 2018 and 2019. The FELLINI programme received 210 and 231 applications respectively, ultimately awarding 30 fellowships to outstanding candidates from prestigious research institutions worldwide. These selections were made through a highly competitive, merit-based process overseen by an International Selection Committee. Each applicant received an evaluation summary report within four months of the application deadline. The first 15 fellows commenced their fellowships in 2019, although one Italian fellow resigned after three months to accept a permanent position in Italy. For the second call, the evaluation process concluded in December 2019, resulting in the approval of the final ranking list. Between 2020 and 2021, 22 new fellows were recruited from the ranking lists of both calls, because eight fellows secured prestigious or permanent positions elsewhere during this time. Additionally, in 2022 one researcher was hired using resources freed up by the resignation of a FELLINI fellow.
The FELLINI fellowship was widely recognized as a pivotal step in the fellows' careers, enabling 19 out of 37 fellows to secure tenure-track or permanent positions in renowned research institutions both domestically and internationally.
Despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, INFN adapted its policies, reducing the minimum duration of secondments to six months and allowing for interdisciplinary research in Italian institutions. Nonetheless, several fellows completed their secondment periods abroad, supported by additional funding from INFN. With the easing of COVID restrictions, fellows were able to fully realize their projects.
The outcomes of the FELLINI projects were disseminated through over 170 open access publications and more than a hundred presentations at international workshops and conferences. Monthly seminars organized by the FELLINI Coordination Board further facilitated dissemination. Fellows also organized six international workshops using allocated research training budgets.
The strong global presence of INFN research activities in more than 30 countries in all five continents, underlines the big network of international and national collaborations which involve large numbers of scientists and institutes from all over the world. In this context the FELLINI fellows, having the possibility to conduct their research always with the support of their supervisors and in collaboration with research teams present in the hosting INFN units, could operate well inside international collaborations.
As it commonly occurs for cutting-edge research projects, most of the FELLINI projects have given rise to results which are readily exploitable or even which have already started being exploited through new promising research roads. Just to provide a significant example, the Caravita’s FELLINI project resulted in the achievement of an innovative technique to realize a laser cooling of a large fraction of antimatter atoms with promising applications in various fields dealing with the studies of antimatter properties. Indeed, not only the paper reporting such result has been promptly accepted for publication in the prestigious Physical Review Letters journal, but also the APS editor of PRL has proposed this publication among the Editors’ Highlights and for its Press Release and the INFN Communication Office has delivered a special news about such important result. Caravita acknowledges at the end of the paper the support received by the FELLINI Cofund all along the research work leading to this result.
