Michele Parrinello is an Italian physicist particularly known for his work in molecular dynamics. Parrinello and Roberto Car were awarded the Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and the Sidney Fernbach Award in 2009 for their continuing development of the Car–Parrinello method, first proposed in their seminal 1985 paper, "Unified Approach for Molecular Dynamics and Density-Functional Theory". They have continued to receive awards for this breakthrough, most recently the Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences and the 2021 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry.

Messina is a harbour city and the capital of the Italian Metropolitan City of Messina. It is the third largest city on the island of Sicily, and the 13th largest city in Italy, with a population of more than 218,000 inhabitants in the city proper and about 650,000 in the Metropolitan City. It is located near the northeast corner of Sicily, at the Strait of Messina and it is an important access terminal to Calabria region, Villa San Giovanni, Reggio Calabria on the mainland. According to Eurostat the FUA of the metropolitan area of Messina has, in 2014, 277,584 inhabitants.