Institutional Welcome to the Workshop on Neutrino Telescopes

Good afternoon, and a warm welcome to all the participants in Neutrino Telescopes 2025, on behalf of our Rector Daniela Mapelli, of the Director of the Physics and Astronomy Department Flavio Seno, and of the Director of the Padua INFN Section Roberto Carlin. Padua has been organizing this workshop from the very beginning, but this is the first time it is held in Padua: to celebrate, this inaugural day is in this beautiful Aula Magna. Let me just say a few words to introduce our University to those of you who are visiting us for their first time. Padua University was founded in 1222, more then 800 years ago. Its motto is “Universa Universis Patavina Libertas”, which means “Universal freedom, for all people and disciplines, in Padua”: we are trying to stick to it also in the present difficult times for academic freedom. Today, we have more than 75000 students and more than 2800 professors and researchers. We are organised in 32 departments, belonging to 8 Schools. We have one Excellence School, Scuola Galileiana, named after Galileo Galilei, the founder of modern science, who wrote to have spent in Padua the best years of his life. We have also 1 university hospital, 1 veterinary hospital, 1 experimental farm, 13 university museums. Coming to research, we cover most fields of LS, PE and SH. Of our budget for research projects [roughly 100M/year], 1/4 comes from internal resources, 3/4 from external funding, national and international. In terms of European funding, we are the best performing Italian university in Pillar I of HE, with 70 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships and 26 ERC Grants so far. We are doing well, in the very first places of the national ranking, also in the other two pillars. In terms of national funding, we are currently involved in many projects of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan: in particular, we have important tasks in the National Centre on High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing and in the Einstein Telescope Infrastructure Consortium, ETIC. The Physics and Astronomy department is one of the largest in Italy, and it was classified at the top in the last national competition for Departments of Excellence: it counts 168 academic staff, 83 technical and administrative staff, 74 postdocs, more than 200 Master students. We offer 3 undergraduate programs (Physics, Astronomy, Optics and Optometry), 3 Master programs (Physics, Physics of Data, Astrophysics and Cosmology), 3 PhD programs (Physics, Astronomy, Technologies for fundamental research in physics and astrophysics). The INFN Padua Section was one of the four INFN founding sections in 1951, with Milan, Turin and Rome. At present it is the largest section in Italy, with 127 employees of which 37 researchers, 30 technologists, 29 tecnicians and 21 administrative staff. The Section supports (financially, technically and technologically) researchers from both INFN and the Department, with 347 associates (including PhD students and postdcs) and 68 research associates. The Section in engaged with leadrship roles in all areas of fundamental physics, both theoretical and experimental, and can count on technical and tecnhological resources of very high level in computing, mechanics and electronics. Neutrino physics and astrophysics has been a flagship of the scientific activity of the section since its birth, and keeps being so, this conference being a primary example. I regret that today I will have to leave you shortly because of another meeting. Before doing so, I would like to congratulate Mauro Mezzetto and all the team who contributed to the scientific and practical organisation of this event. I wish to all of you a very succesful workshop. To our guests from abroad, I also wish a pleasant stay in Padua during this week, and hopefully for the weekend if you have time, the weather should be good. Fabio Zwirner Vice-Rector for Research University of Padua