Claudio Tuniz, ICTP's newly appointed special assistant to the director, has travelled the world. Now he has returned to the region of his birth in northeast Italy and he's glad to be back home.

Homeward Bound

It's often not easy to return home after a 15-year absence. But Claudio Tuniz, ICTP's newly appointed special assistant to the director, had an added incentive to come back to his native Italy. It meant reuniting with his family after nearly 15 years of long-distance commutes.
Tuniz explains. "In 1991, I was appointed lead scientist of the accelerator mass spectrometry group for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) in Sydney, marking the beginning of a rewarding career in Australia. Five years later, I was promoted to the position of director of ANSTO's 100-person physics division. Then, in 2000, I relocated to the Australian Embassy in Vienna, Austria, to represent the Australian government at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on issues related to science and technology."

In 1993, Claudio Tuniz's Australian-based accelerator mass spectrometry group attracted worldwide attention when it helped date a giant egg of the flightless Aepyornis Maximum (Elephant Bird) found in the desert near Perth, Australia. Scientists believe that the 2000-year-old egg, equivalent in size to 150 normal-sized eggs, floated to Australia from Madagascar, landing ashore without a scratch.

"Throughout my far-flung journeys, my wife, a professor of economics at the University of Udine, remained in Italy, doing most of the commuting so that we could be together as often as possible. While we both enjoyed our experience abroad, we both had grown weary of our 'in-jet' life-style. Italy beckoned and I knew it was time."
As a result, Tuniz, who was born in the small village of San Canzian d'Isonzo, near Gorizia in northeastern Italy, moved home last spring to begin the next phase of his life. Within a month of his arrival, he was at work in ICTP's Main Building, where he was greeted by several of his former University of Trieste professors---including Gallieno Denardo, GianCarlo Ghirardi and Giuseppe Furlan. Tuniz earned a doctorate in physics from the University of Trieste in 1974.
During the first decade of his career, Tuniz found himself hard at work at a number of institutions, including the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the Elettra Synchrotron Light Laboratory in Italy, and Rutgers University and Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States, where he engaged in research projects ranging from the development of accelerator-based analytical methodologies for counting rare atoms to pioneering applications of radionuclides designed to cast light on the cosmic record embedded in meteorites and lunar rocks.
Tuniz is not only delighted to be back in Trieste but glad to be working at ICTP, an organisation that he calls "an international treasure that has had an enormous impact on global science and, yet, has enormous potential to do even more."
As the director's special assistant, Tuniz will take the lead in exploring new opportunities to strengthen ICTP's cooperative activities with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), IAEA and other UN organisations, concentrating on such areas as education and training, knowledge management and the application of physics to cultural heritage. Tuniz also hopes to explore the possibility of cooperative projects with European scientific institutions through the European Commission's Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.
"My own major field of scientific research has focused largely on studies that rely on long-lived radioisotopes generated by galactic cosmic rays that subsequently reside in the Earth's atmosphere and landmass. Such isotopes have proven useful in dating climatic events---for example, the last Ice Age that occurred 20,000 years ago---as well as such prehistoric cultural phenomena as the rock paintings of Australian aborigines."
"After many years as a civil servant vagabond in pursuit of scientific adventures around the globe, I am glad to have finally found my way back home," says Tuniz. "I know my family is happy to be back together again and I can only hope that ICTP will be happy with my efforts."

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