THE ITALIAN SUMMER STUDENTS PROGRAM AT THE FERMI NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY

Since 1984 the Italian groups of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) collaborating in the Collider Detector experiment (CDF) at the national DOE laboratory of Fermilab (Batavia, Illinois, USA) have been running a summer training program for Italian university students. In the first year the program involved only 4 Pisa physics students. The program was later extended to engineering students. Since 2004 the program is supported in part by DOE in the frame of an exchange agreement with INFN.
An additional agreement for sharing support for engineers of the Scuola Superiore di S.Anna (SSSA) of Pisa was established in 2007 between SSSA and Fermilab.
In 2010 the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF) has started a similar program by supporting 10 summer students in several science institutions in the USA, including 4 students in the Fermilab program. In total in August and September 2010 Fermilab hosted 24 physics students in physics and engineering from the universities of Bologna, Padua, Pisa, Rome, Turin, Trieste, and from the Polytechnic of Turin and Milan. The training programs spanned from physics analysis
of high energy proton antiproton interactions to construction of neutrino detectors and accelerator components to R/D on superconductive elements to theory of accelerators.
The program is expected to grow greatly in the future being extended to training stages in scientific institutions outside Fermilab.

Information on student recruiting methods, detailed training programs, on funding, and on students evaluation of the program will be given in the presentation.