Publishing date: 26 August 2026 Immagine notizia Immagine Paragrafo The University of Insubria was represented in the United States at the international workshop “Energy and Polarization Problems in Mathematics and Statistics – Part I,” held from August 16 to 19 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and jointly organized with the University of Insubria.The workshop brought together researchers from universities and institutions around the world working on problems concerning the distribution of points in space, a field at the intersection of potential theory, approximation theory and statistics, with applications also in physics, chemistry and, in particular, materials science. One of the main goals is to identify configurations in which points are distributed as uniformly as possible over a given surface.Classical problems related to point distribution include covering and separation, which have their roots in mathematical questions explored over the centuries by some of the most important figures in the history of science, including Kepler, Gauss, Lord Kelvin and Sir Thomson.More recent are the problems of energy and polarization, which were the specific focus of the Nashville workshop. In the case of energy, the aim is to identify point configurations characterized by a repulsive force similar to that between subatomic particles, hence the name. In the case of polarization, the goal is to identify points that are not clustered around any given point.The workshop was promoted by Professor Raffaello Seri of the Department of Economics at the University of Insubria, together with Professors Edward B. Saff and Douglas Hardin of Vanderbilt University. The initiative grew out of the collaboration between the InsIDE Lab, directed by Seri, and the Center for Constructive Approximation (CCA) in the Department of Mathematics at Vanderbilt University.A second edition is scheduled for late May or early June 2027 and will be hosted by the University of Insubria, in Como and Varese.