(May 9) – “Today, looking back to when i left, I always think I made the right choice.” So speaks a young Italian engineer who has worked at the European research center in Culham, a dozen miles from Oxford, and now lives in Finland. Carmelenzo Labate will turn thirty in December and has been living abroad for three years, first in the United Kingdom and then in Finland. He has grown in Bova Marina, a small town in the province of Reggio Calabria, where he studied electronic Engineering. “After high school,” he says, “I enrolled at the Mediterranean University. After graduation, I obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Automation. Then I went to Culham, working on the magnetic control of plasmas in fusion reactors, in the laboratories of the JET, which is the largest nuclear fusion reactor operating in Europe.” Labate is enthusiastic about the choice he made: “Today I am still conducting studies related to nuclear fusion, but I live in Tampere, Finland.”. About his work, the Italian engineer says, “It’s not dangerous at all. If we could go from the current experimental stage to something good for the market, the process of merging would represent a valid alternative to energy.” As a young immigrant, Labate misses his country, however “Italy remains a mirage, for now,” as he explains, “They lack the conditions to work, and as I have a strong professional situation here in Finland, surely I won’t come back in the next future.” If you ask him what was the greatest difficulty he faced, he will answer with no doubts, “The language. It is a challenge. For how much fluid you can be with a foreign language, you have to relate yourself to others in a language different from yours, which also is full of complexities and nuances. But, If you choose to live outside Italy,” Labate concludes with a hint of irony, “Is a side effect that you should take into account.” (Gil/Red)
