Author: webmaster
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St. Patrick’s Day on Campus
Campus Life Update With Saint Patrick’s Day on Tuesday, the feast of one of our patron saints, CatholicTech has had quite the busy time this week. Saturday, we hosted our annual St. Patrick’s day party, complete with a live band. Many of the people of Castel Gandolfo came down to enjoy the festivities, as well…
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What if a Vaccine could be Built like Origami?
Researchers at Harvard have developed a method for folding DNA into nanoscale shapes, offering not just a new vaccine candidate, but a fundamentally different approach to how vaccines might be designed, stored, and deployed. Rather than targeting a single disease with a fixed formulation, this strategy functions as a programmable delivery platform: a structural framework…
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Countdown to Finals Begins!
Campus Life Update This week at CatholicTech, students have begun preparing for final exams, while still making the most of their free time and fitting in as many adventures as possible. From trips north of Rome to spend time with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, to free museum visits on International Women’s Day, to…
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When Worlds Collide: Astronomers May Be Watching a Planetary Crash in Real Time
What does the birth of a planet look like? Astronomers believe it often begins with violence. Worlds collide, shatter, and slowly rebuild themselves from debris. Now researchers may have found a system where the aftermath of such a collision is unfolding in real time. A newly reported object called Gaia-GIC-1 could be the dusty fingerprint…
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College Night
Campus Life Update Monday night was quite the time to be a CatholicTech student, with the Pontifical North American College’s annual College Night! The Catholic universities with study abroad programs in Rome come together for a night of prayer and fellowship. In today’s day and age, this is especially important, as it is a chance…
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Tiny Lab-Grown Spinal Cords Could Transform How We Treat Paralysis
In a recent study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers report a sophisticated new platform for studying spinal cord injury (SCI): three-dimensional human spinal cord organoids grown from stem cells. These miniature, lab-grown tissues replicate key structural and cellular features of the human spinal cord and can be experimentally injured and treated under controlled conditions. The…
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The First Week of Lent
Campus Life Update Since the start of Lent, our students have been finding the time to serve our community and bond with one another. Ash Wednesday was observed as a quiet day; aside from classes, it was a day of reflection and fasting for the student body to prepare for the Lenten season. Saturday, some…
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Bacterial Communication Crosses into the Anaerobic Frontier
Solid tumors are notoriously difficult to treat. Their cores are oxygen-starved and poorly penetrated by chemotherapy or radiation. But a bacterium called Clostridium sporogenes thrives in exactly these conditions. Its spores remain dormant in healthy tissue and germinate specifically in hypoxic tumor environments. The challenge has been giving it the tools needed to make it a reliable…
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Field Trip to Gran Sasso National Laboratories
Campus Life Update This week leading up to Lent at CatholicTech has certainly been one to remember. Last Friday, students were able to visit the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, which is the largest underground laboratory for research in neutrinos and astrophysics in the world. They were guided by Massimo Manarelli, a nuclear physicist, around the…
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Gran Sasso Science Institute and the NUSES Mission: Terzina’s First Look at Ultra-High-Energy Showers from Space
In September 2025, at the 39th International Cosmic Ray Conference in Geneva, Teresa Montaruli and the NUSES Collaboration presented a compact space telescope designed to test whether man can routinely detect ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECR) and even astrophysical neutrinos from orbit. The instrument is called Terzina. It flies aboard NUSES, a low Earth orbit satellite…