Luigi Marchese wins the prestigious SIF 2025 award for Science Communication, recognising his work on disseminating physics through comic books from the Societa’ Italiana di Fisica “Italian Physics Society”, or SIG.
LUIGI MARCHESE, ETH Zürich e Fermilab
Per aver promosso il progetto nazionale "Physics&Comics" e il progetto "Topolino e le Scienze" coinvolgendo i lettori del settimanale Topolino e gli studenti delle scuole primarie e secondarie sui temi della fisica delle particelle, onde gravitazionali e esplorazione spaziale, attraverso i fumetti Disney.
LUIGI MARCHESE, ETH Zurich and Fermilab
For having promoted the nation-wide project “Physics&Comics” and the project “ Mickey Mouse and Science”, allowing regular weekly readers of Mickey Mouse comics and primary and secondary school students to interact with the concepts of particle physics, gravitational waves, and space exploration, through Disney comics.
ABOVE: Section of comic book story on muons. [Credits: @Disney, taken from “Topolino" n. 3527 “Zio Paperone e l'inghippo del Muone”]
This important demographic for outreach has a knock-on effect on the future of STEM.
In today’s society, many young people are discouraged from enrolling in STEM faculties. As a result, there are not enough graduates in STEM faculties, increasingly in demand in a job market dominated by the advent of artificial intelligence algorithms. Reaching children and teenagers has the potential to create positive attitudes towards future STEM careers. This is the target audience of the project, whose aim is to communicate the latest discoveries in science and space exploration through Disney comics characters. The great interest and positive results produced by this project have inspired improvements for a more inclusive and science-enriched development.
Luigi is developing a set of new comics on particle physics, possibly including Augmented Reality features! They are called “Qua(r)k!”, and are being developed with a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), in collaboration with Dr. Ana Godinho, project co-leader and expert in science communication.
Further links
Teaching Methods for Science Journal article by Luigi Marchese
Blog by Luigi Marchese on the Mickey Mouse project