Passport and Visa Office
The Centre's Passport and Visa Information Office is the gateway to ICTP.
Each year, the four-person visa office processes more than 3500 visa applications.

Standing: Mauro Calligaris and Aida Foco
Sitting: Nina Dabrowski and Nora Opecca

Some visas are for our staff scientists who are planning extended stays in Italy, often lasting several years, even decades. Some are for individual visiting scientists who come to Trieste to participate in ICTP research and training activities. Some are for their accompanying family members--husbands, wives and children--who are here because their spouse or parents are here. And some are for travel from, not to, Italy for attendance at workshops and conferences abroad.
These 'comings' and 'goings' put the ICTP visa office in direct contact with consulates and embassies from more than 100 countries.
Despite similarities in the process, each consulate and each embassy have their own set of rules and their own style of doing business.
As ICTP's visiting scientists know, regardless of where they come from or where they are going to, governments have become much stricter in the issuance of visas over the past two years following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. New procedures require more detailed information and often a personal visit to the consulate or embassy before an individual and his or her family are allowed to come or go. A fast and simple 'ok' has become the exception, not the rule.
As a result, it now takes much longer to process a visa. Indeed, in some cases, visitors have been forced to cancel their visits as a result of delays in reviewing their applications.
The new world of travel in which we all live requires both vigilance and patience. ICTP understands governments' concerns for security and works cooperatively with them to ensure that all regulations are followed and fulfilled. At the same time, its close relationship with officials both here in Italy and in many countries abroad helps to ensure that our concerns are heard by those who are responsible for facilitating the visa process and ensuring the safety of their citizenry.
The process is bounded by reams of rules and regulations, yet it is often personal at its core, both for those who are seeking to obtain visas and those helping them to receive permission to travel.
To effectively serve the Centre's scientists, staff members of the ICTP visa office must operate in both the world of written rules and the world of personal contacts. It is these twin challenges that make the visa office, ICTP's gateway, an interesting and rewarding place in which to work.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 47th General Conference was held at the Agency's headquarters in Vienna on 15-19 September. This marked the first IAEA Conference attended by ICTP director Katepalli R. Sreenivasan (left). He was accompanied by Gallieno Denardo (right), acting director of administration, and Brian Stewart (centre), on secondment to ICTP from the US Department of Energy. ICTP also displayed two posters describing the long history and broad range of current research and training activities shared by the Agency and the Centre.

Carlo Fonda, a member of ICTP-RadioNet (Programme of Training and System Development on Networking and Radiocommunications) at ICTP's Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory, recently spoke about the rapid dissemination of Linux software among computer users in Africa. His talk took place at a conference on technology in Africa, held in Los Angeles, on 12-14 September.

The conference was part of the Los Angeles Black Business Expo and Trade Show. ICTP has been assisting African institutions' efforts to utilise this free open-source language since 1995 (see News from ICTP, Summer 1999, p. 4-5.)

US Returns to UNESCO
The United States has returned to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after a 19-year absence. The official announcement marking the US return took place at the opening session of UNESCO's 32nd General Assembly, held at the organisation's headquarters in Paris on 29 September. The number of member states that now belong to UNESCO stands at 190.

Armand Borel, a key figure in the development of late 20th century mathematics and one of the founders of the theory of algebraic groups, died on 11 August in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. He was 80 years old. Born in a French-speaking canton of Switzerland, Borel was a member of the Bourbaki Group, a group of young mathematicians studying in France whose collective explorations of new avenues of mathematical research began in the 1930s and 1940s and continue to this day. Borel's most important contributions included his insightful studies of the mathematical symmetries known as Lie groups, a central element in the study of mathematics today. Borel visited ICTP in the summer of 1996.

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