Strengthening collaboration between institutions, universities, research organisations and businesses to develop the skills and technologies needed to enhance the competitiveness and security of Italy and Europe. This was the focus of a meeting held at the University of Trieste with a delegation from the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of University and Research (MUR), the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMIT) and the Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Government.

Strategic technologies at the heart of the new Europe.

The meeting was inspired by the framework established by the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP), the European initiative supporting the development and deployment of technologies considered strategic for the competitiveness, security and technological autonomy of the European Union.

Three areas are of particular interest: Digital Technologies and Deep Tech, Biotechnology, and Clean Technologies.

It is precisely in the ability to develop the skills needed in these fields that universities and research institutions are called upon to play a decisive role.

The meeting confirmed the shared commitment to developing new synergies to support the growth of the strategic technologies identified by the European Union, combining innovation, sustainability and competitiveness, while keeping the needs of people and society at the centre.

As part of this effort, the University of Trieste aims to strengthen its role as a hub connecting education, research, institutions and the productive sector, contributing to the training of the professionals needed to design and manage the strategic technologies and infrastructures of the future. In this context, UniTS can offer multidisciplinary expertise across a wide range of fields: from quantum technologies to physics and computer science, from engineering to energy infrastructure, and from logistics to sustainability technologies.

The delegation’s visit concluded at Area Science Park in Basovizza, at the UniTS laboratories ArQuS – Artificial Quantum Systems and QCI – Quantum Communication and Information.

Members of the delegation.

The Rector met with Rear Admiral Vito Lacerenza, Deputy Head of the Cabinet of the Minister of Defence, and Rear Admiral Vincenzo Pullez, Head of the Office for Strategic Studies and Technological Innovation.

Representing MUR was Francesco Ciardiello, from the Technical Secretariat of the Directorate-General for Research, responsible for funding programming and technological innovation. MIMIT was represented by Gianluigi Sechi, an advisor to the Ministry.

The Friuli Venezia Giulia Regional Government was represented by Ketty Segatti, Director of the Specialist Operational Unit for Research, Innovation, European Social Fund Plus and other EU funds; Luciana Grimani, Head of the Research, Development and Innovation Organisational Unit; and Michela Giarle, Head of the Strategic Projects and European and International Research and Innovation Collaborations Organisational Unit.

Representing UniTS were Angelo Bassi, coordinator of the Quantum Physics projects, and Prof. Giorgio Sulligoi, Director of the Department of Engineering and Architecture.

The entrance examination for the University of Trieste’s degree programmes in the health professions took place today. A total of 875 applicants registered for 525 available places across eleven programmes based in Trieste, Gorizia and Pordenone. Applications reached an all-time high, up 31% on 2025.

Interest extended across the full range of programmes: when first, second and third choices are combined, every programme attracted more expressions of preference than available places. Each applicant could select up to three degree programmes, ranked in order of preference, to be considered for admission to each.

Applications increased for Psychiatric Rehabilitation (+69%), Dental Hygiene in Trieste (+42.4%), Dental Hygiene in Pordenone (+39.4%), Medical Radiology, Diagnostic Imaging and Radiotherapy Techniques (+34.8%), Speech and Language Therapy (+30.2%), Physiotherapy (+21.5%, with a record number of applications) and Health Assistance (+17.4%).

Nursing also recorded a positive result, with first-choice applications rising by 21.2% compared with last year. This recovery significantly outpaced the national increase of 16.3% reported by FNOPI, Italy’s National Federation of Nursing Professions.

Physiotherapy remained the most sought-after programme, with 254 first-choice applications, followed by Nursing, with 143, and Speech and Language Therapy, with 112.

For the 2026/27 academic year, programmes will again be offered across the three locations. Trieste has 220 places in Nursing, 40 in Physiotherapy, 40 in Biomedical Laboratory Techniques, 30 in Medical Radiology, Diagnostic Imaging and Radiotherapy Techniques, 25 in Dental Hygiene, 30 in Psychiatric Rehabilitation and 30 in Speech and Language Therapy.

Gorizia offers 40 places in Health Assistance and 20 in Environmental and Occupational Prevention Techniques. In Pordenone, Dental Hygiene and Dietetics each offer 25 places.

Women continued to make up a clear majority of those registered for the entrance examination, once again accounting for more than 70% of applicants.

Applicants’ places of residence also highlight the programmes’ appeal beyond the region: one in five lives in another Italian region, with Veneto accounting for by far the largest share, at 16.1% of all applicants. The most represented provinces were Treviso, Venice and Belluno.

The examination took place in buildings H3 and C1 on the Piazzale Europa campus. Applicants had 100 minutes to answer 60 multiple-choice questions: 23 in biology, 15 in chemistry, 13 in physics and mathematics, five in logical reasoning and problem-solving, and four assessing reading comprehension and knowledge acquired during previous studies. Admission rankings will be published within 15 days of the examination.

Is it possible to recover genetic information from plankton samples preserved in formalin for seven years? The answer is yes. This is demonstrated by a new study resulting from a collaboration between the University of Trieste (UniTS) and the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Research (OGS), recently published in the Journal of Plankton Research.

The study analysed samples of mesozooplankton collected in the Gulf of Trieste in 2017 and preserved in formalin for approximately seven years.

What is mesozooplankton? It refers to the community of small animal organisms that live in seawater and, although often invisible to the naked eye, play a fundamental role in marine ecosystems. It includes, for example, small crustaceans, larvae, and other organisms that form an essential component of the marine food web.

These organisms are normally identified under a microscope. This study instead applied DNA metabarcoding, extracting and sequencing genetic material from zooplankton samples collected and fixed in formalin. In practice, rather than searching for and identifying organisms one by one, the method analyses the “genetic code” present in the sample to reconstruct which species or groups of organisms are present.

Formalin damages DNA, making these analyses particularly challenging. Despite this obstacle, the researchers were able to recover a significant amount of biological information. Comparison with microscopic identification showed that the molecular method can identify a substantial proportion of the organisms present.

Historical collections as biodiversity archives

The most important finding of the study concerns future prospects. Research institutes and museums around the world hold vast historical collections of plankton, collected over decades and often preserved in formalin.

These samples could therefore represent not only archives of biodiversity observable under a microscope, but also genetic archives of marine life from the past.

Analysing them could make it possible to reconstruct how marine communities have changed over time, by comparing present-day biodiversity with that of decades ago. It could also help retrospectively identify the presence of non-native species, including during the early stages of their appearance in a given area.

The study was supported by the Interconnected Nord-Est Innovation Ecosystem (iNEST) and the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC)**, both funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR)**.

The University of Trieste and the Trieste Police Headquarters (Questura di Trieste) have signed a memorandum of understanding under which the parties commit, within the scope of and in compliance with their respective institutional roles and purposes, to promoting, developing and strengthening opportunities and initiatives for collaboration. The agreement was signed by the Rector, Donata Vianelli, and the Chief of Police (Questore) of Trieste, Lilia Fredella.

The collaboration will cover several areas. It provides for advanced training programmes, seminars and supplementary teaching modules delivered with the contribution of State Police experts, as well as meetings and training conferences for University teaching staff and students on State Police topics of interest to the University. Similar training initiatives will be organised for managers and staff of the Trieste Police Headquarters, focusing on regulatory aspects relevant to their work. 

The agreement also provides for information sessions for students interested in pursuing a career in the State Police, and for the State Police's participation in the Career Day periodically organised by the University.

Other commitments include dedicated support for administrative procedures for international faculty and students at the University, the development of joint study projects on topics of shared interest — with particular attention to the scientific and technological fields — and curricular internships and research fellowships for University students to be carried out at the Police Headquarters. 

The parties will also collaborate on joint research activities aimed at producing publications, as well as on information, institutional communication and dedicated event initiatives.

How can we track the behaviour of a gas once it has been injected deep beneath the Earth’s surface? This is the challenge at the heart of SBEM (Svelvik Borehole Electromagnetic Monitoring), an experimental campaign carried out in Norway by a team from the Exploration Geophysics Group of the Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Geosciences (MIGE) at the University of Trieste.

The experiment took place at the Svelvik CO₂ Field Lab, near Oslo, a research facility operated by the Norwegian research centre SINTEF and designed to test technologies for monitoring underground gas storage under controlled yet realistic conditions.

At the core of the SBEM campaign is borehole electromagnetic monitoring, a geophysical technique being tested to reconstruct the distribution and evolution of gas injected into the subsurface. This capability is crucial for the safe and economically sustainable development of both carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) and underground hydrogen storage.

An international laboratory bringing research “into the field”

The Svelvik CO₂ Field Lab serves as a bridge between laboratory research and future industrial-scale applications. The University of Trieste group was able to access the facility and carry out the experimental campaign thanks to Geo-INQUIRE (Geosphere INfrastructures for QUestions into Integrated REsearch), a project funded under Horizon Europe that facilitates transnational access to Europe’s leading geoscientific research infrastructures.

The proposal submitted by the Trieste team was selected through a competitive process under the Geo-INQUIRE call, enabling the researchers to design and carry out the experimental activities directly in the field.

From proposal to field research: training through experience

A distinctive feature of the project was the direct involvement of PhD students Elisa Ligas and Giovanni Pantaleo, who followed the entire research process: from preparing the proposal and designing the geophysical acquisition to setting up the instrumentation and conducting the fieldwork, through to data processing, analysis and interpretation.

“This project demonstrates what the University of Trieste offers its students and PhD candidates: the opportunity to design and conduct original research at the forefront of current technology, in close collaboration with international research and industrial organisations,” highlights Michele Pipan, coordinator of the Exploration Geophysics Group and of the Master’s Degree Programme in Geophysics and Geodata. “Experiences such as this one at Svelvik turn PhD students into independent researchers, ready to contribute to the technologies needed for the energy transition.”

FUSE Project (UniTS–UniUD–OGS)

Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) and natural (“white”) hydrogen resources are emerging as key components of Europe’s energy transition strategy, offering large-scale, flexible and low-carbon solutions that can help mitigate the intermittency of some renewable energy sources and strengthen energy security.

Achieving the objectives of the European Hydrogen Strategy and global net-zero roadmaps requires robust geoscientific evidence and advanced technological capabilities to identify, characterise and monitor suitable geological formations. Reducing the risks associated with subsurface operations—from technical and environmental risks to geological hazards—requires new integrated research infrastructures.

The FUSE project, launched in April 2025, addresses this need. Developed through a strategic partnership between OGS, the University of Trieste and the University of Udine, FUSE is building an open, distributed infrastructure that combines state-of-the-art geophysical instrumentation, laboratory facilities and multiscale modelling environments.

The infrastructure integrates borehole geophysical logging systems, seismic, geoelectric and electromagnetic instruments, fibre-optic and orbital-vibrator monitoring solutions, as well as airborne/drone-based magnetic and gravimetric sensing capabilities. These are complemented by advanced laboratory platforms for petrophysics and fluid dynamics.

Together, these components will enable improved imaging, experimentation and simulation of hydrogen–rock–fluid interactions in Italy and beyond.

An international study published in PLOS Medicine documents the progressive decline in stillbirth and early neonatal mortality between 1990 and 2023 across 17 low- and middle-income countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Jordan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Colombia, and Peru).

The study was conducted by Dr Mohammed Ali (World Health Organization, Geneva) and Prof. Saverio Bellizzi (United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Ontario, Canada), in collaboration with Prof. Luca Cegolon, Professor of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the University of Trieste.

Lower perinatal mortality was found to be associated with residence in urban areas, higher levels of maternal education, greater household socioeconomic status, and stronger national welfare systems. By contrast, maternal age of 30 years or older was associated with an increased risk.

Stillbirth and early neonatal mortality remain a major global health challenge, with the vast majority of cases occurring in low- and middle-income countries that rely on household surveys—such as the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)—for their estimates, as civil registration systems are often incomplete.

However, DHS data tend to underestimate the scale of the problem and misclassify cases of stillbirth and early neonatal death, limiting their usefulness for planning maternal and child health interventions.

“Although most countries have experienced a decline in perinatal mortality, progress remains uneven and significant socioeconomic disparities persist. Strengthening maternal and neonatal health services and improving data collection systems in low- and middle-income countries remain essential to accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of reducing perinatal mortality,” state Prof. Cegolon and Dr Bellizzi.

The study, recently published in PLOS Medicine, analysed 93 DHS surveys conducted between 1990 and 2023 across 17 low- and middle-income countries, covering a total of 1,019,253 reported pregnancies among 733,181 women. Pregnancies lasting at least seven months were included, in line with the standard definition of stillbirth.

Age-specific risks of stillbirth and early neonatal death were estimated using life-table methods and a modified Gompertz-Makeham model, which is able to correct for common DHS data-quality issues, including underreporting, misclassification between stillbirths and deaths occurring on days 0–1 after birth, and age heaping at death—that is, the tendency to systematically report neonatal deaths as occurring at 7 days of age rather than on adjacent days.

UniTS and the University of Rijeka (UNIRI) have launched efforts to strengthen their collaboration through an official meeting. The two institutions share a strong focus on research, innovation, engagement with the local area, and their strategic position in the Upper Adriatic region.

Among the first initiatives identified to give concrete form to the agreement is the organization of Joint Research Day Seminars, initially focusing on three areas: Naval Engineering, Blue Economy and Physics. The two universities will explore potential collaborations in other strategic fields in the future.

The collaboration may also be extended to administrative and student communities through staff meetings, student entrepreneurship programmes, technology transfer initiatives and Erasmus Traineeship opportunities.

The meeting builds on a relationship that began in 2001 and has led over the years to nearly one hundred joint scientific publications, as well as joint participation in NAHV – North Adriatic Hydrogen Valley, the major European project dedicated to developing the renewable hydrogen economy in the Upper Adriatic region, which originated from an UniTS initiative.

The meeting was attended, on behalf of UNIRI, by Rector Goran Hauser, Vice-Rector for Strategic Projects Goran Vukelić and Vice-Rector for Digitalisation and Development Marin Karuza. Representing UniTS were Rector Donata Vianelli, Vice-Rector for Research Paolo Fornasiero, Vice-Rector for Relations with Companies and the Local Community Guido Bortoluzzi and Delegate for Technology Transfer and Relations with Research Institutions Erik Vesselli.

The X-Culture Global Business Week has begun in Trieste, transforming the city into a global international business laboratory until 8 August. For the first time, the University of Trieste is hosting and organising the final event of a programme that brings together universities, students and businesses through hands-on experience in developing business projects and multicultural collaboration.

The Trieste edition, organised by the Department of Economics, Business, Mathematics and Statistics “Bruno de Finetti” – DEAMS together with X-Culture’s international organising committee, brings together almost 150 selected students from 36 countries, alongside academics, researchers, managers and professionals from different continents.

The plenary sessions are taking place at MIB Trieste School of Management, a partner of the event, while the awards ceremony will be held on Friday, 7 August, during the closing evening, which will also include a gala dinner in Piazzale Europa.

The event marks the culmination of an international educational programme that is unique in both scale and structure. Since its launch in 2010, X-Culture has involved more than 130,000 students from 701 universities and 115 countries, organised into over 16,000 international teams. Participants work remotely, communicating in English across different time zones, cultures and academic backgrounds to develop solutions to real-world challenges set by companies around the globe.

Some of the best-performing students in the 2026 edition have travelled to Trieste after being selected on the basis of the results achieved during the international online phase. They include seven students from the University of Trieste, whose participation is supported by DEAMS and the Fondazione Pietro Pittini, which has long been committed to promoting educational and international opportunities for young people.

The initiative’s Lead Host is Rector Donata Vianelli, Professor of International and Cross-Cultural Marketing, who over the past fifteen years has involved more than 700 University of Trieste students in the project.

“Global Business Week offers students an experience that reflects the complexity of international work in a very tangible way: people with different languages, cultures and backgrounds are called upon to work together to develop solutions for real companies. At the same time, initiatives of this kind strengthen Trieste’s role as an international platform for education and innovation, capable of attracting talent, building connections with the business community and contributing to the economic development of the local area through the University’s global outlook,” said Donata Vianelli.

The organisation directly involves UniTS academics Guido Bortoluzzi, who is also Academic Director of MIB’s MBA in International Business, Andrea Tracogna, who also serves as Dean of MIB, and Rubina Romanello, together with researcher Chiara Marinelli, MIB lecturer Stefano Pilotto, the University’s administrative staff and around ten students involved in preparing and managing the event.

Universities and companies working together on real-world challenges

A central feature of Global Business Week is the collaboration between the University and its partner companies and organisations, some of which represent the economic and cultural fabric of Friuli Venezia Giulia: Assicurazioni Generali, Barilla, Modiano, Fondazione ITS – International Talent Support, Associazione Caffè Trieste and Genuino.

Students are engaging directly with managers and professionals and are being asked to develop analyses, strategies and potential solutions to the real cases and challenges presented by the partner organisations.

This collaboration enables international students to learn more about local businesses, supply chains and organisations, while giving the participating partners the opportunity to gather ideas and perspectives developed by talented young people from a wide range of cultural and academic backgrounds.

Internationally renowned academics

Among the most influential academics attending the event in Trieste is Vasyl “Vas” Taras, Professor of International Business at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, founder of X-Culture and one of the leading experts on multicultural teams and global working groups collaborating remotely.

The event also involves 22 international business academics and experts from universities and institutions in several countries. They include Richard Griffith, Professor of Industrial and Organisational Psychology at the Florida Institute of Technology and Director of the Institute for Culture, Collaboration and Management. His areas of expertise range from international management and cross-cultural collaboration to the development of the skills required to work in complex international environments.

A week working as international consultants

During Global Business Week, participants meet company representatives, analyse the challenges assigned to them, visit company premises and other organisations, and take part in workshops, training sessions and mentoring activities with international academics.

The teams will develop their proposals and submit them to the faculty for an initial assessment and further refinement. At the end of the week, they will present their strategic recommendations to company representatives and an international panel of academics. The best solutions will be recognised during the closing awards ceremony.

The programme also includes opportunities to discover Trieste, its scientific community and its economic and international history.

The event is supported by ARDiS – the Regional Agency for the Right to Higher Education, Fondazione Pietro Pittini, illycaffè, MIB Trieste School of Management, the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trieste Trasporti. Upon their arrival in Trieste, the international group of students and academics was also welcomed by Confcommercio Trieste and FIPE.

Determining whether a gene is mutated in a tumour may not be enough. In many cases, it is also important to know how many copies of that mutated gene are present in the cancer cells and how strongly this alteration affects the behaviour of the disease.

This is the starting point of the study led by Giulio Caravagna, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Trieste and head of the Cancer Data Science Laboratory, published in Nature Genetics. The researchers proposed a new way of reading tumour DNA that more closely reflects the true complexity of cancer: mutations are considered not only in terms of whether they are present or absent, but also in relation to the tumour's overall genomic architecture.

In cancer cells, somatic mutations - those that arise during a person's lifetime in cells other than germ cells - can combine with changes in DNA copy number. As a result, some regions of the genome may be amplified while others are lost. The combination of mutations, amplifications and losses of genomic regions gives rise to the concept of gene mutant dosage. The aim is to estimate how many mutated copies of a gene are actually present in a tumour and assess whether this information has implications for prognosis and metastatic spread.

To address this question, the research team developed INCOMMON - INference of COpy number and Mutation Multiplicity in ONcology - an open-source computational method that estimates the number of mutated copies of a gene and mutation multiplicity from targeted sequencing panels routinely used in clinical oncology.

One of its most significant features is the ability to derive new information from data already generated during diagnostic workflows. INCOMMON uses advanced statistical inference and machine-learning models to interpret the results of clinical molecular tests in the light of large collections of tumours sequenced at whole-genome level.

“INCOMMON represents a new approach to obtaining higher-resolution analyses than current standards, without changing the type of data generated. This new opportunity reveals features of oncogenic processes that may prove relevant from a prognostic and predictive perspective,” explains Giulio Caravagna.

In the study, supported in part by the AIRC Foundation for Cancer Research, the researchers analysed more than 60,000 clinical patient samples, covering 39 different cancer types and over 500,000 mutations. By stratifying more than 20,000 patients according to the mutant dosage of different oncogenes and tumour suppressor genes, the team identified 46 cancer-specific biomarkers associated with overall survival.

The most significant finding is that 13 of these biomarkers, across 12 cancer types, would not have been detected using conventional models based solely on whether a gene is mutated or not. Gene mutant dosage can therefore reveal prognostic signals that a simpler reading of tumour DNA may miss.

The findings also provide new insight into the metastatic behaviour of tumours. In particular, the researchers identified 26 biomarkers recurrently associated with metastatic spread in 10 cancer types, as well as 20 biomarkers whose presence predicts a tumour's tendency to spread to specific organs in five cancer types.

“The data collected in this study show that genomic information already contained in molecular analyses routinely performed in clinical practice can be reinterpreted with far greater precision using advanced statistical inference and machine-learning systems,” says Nicola Calonaci, an AIRC-funded postdoctoral researcher at the University of Trieste and co-first author of the paper.

“One particularly interesting aspect is that gene mutant dosage seems to capture biological properties of tumours that do not emerge when mutations are treated simply as present or absent,” adds Eriseld Krasniqi, a medical oncologist at the IRCCS Regina Elena National Cancer Institute in Rome, a University of Trieste PhD candidate and co-first author of the paper. “This is especially relevant to the study of metastasis, where it has historically been very difficult to identify genomic features that distinguish primary from metastatic tumours.”

“This research is an excellent example of how collaboration between highly specialised clinical centres and computational research groups can translate into knowledge that benefits cancer patients,” says Giovanni Blandino, Scientific Director of the IRCCS Regina Elena National Cancer Institute (IRE) in Rome. “IRE's participation in a study of this scale reflects our commitment to working at the frontier of translational research, where clinical expertise meets the most advanced technologies for genomic data analysis. Extracting new information from molecular tests already available in clinical practice is one of the most promising directions for precision oncology, and an area in which we intend to continue investing.”

The work also opens the way for future studies integrating information on the treatments received by patients, to determine whether gene mutant dosage has not only prognostic value but also predictive value for response to specific therapies.

Further validation will be required before any potential clinical implementation. The direction indicated by the research is nevertheless clear: to make better use of information already available in molecular data, in order to understand disease evolution and contribute to the development of new biomarkers for precision oncology.

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STUDY PUBLISHED IN NATURE GENETICS, 31 JULY 2026

Gene mutant dosage is associated with prognosis and metastatic tropism in 60,000 clinical cancer samples

Nicola Calonaci1,†, Eriseld Krasniqi2,†, Daniel Colic3, Stefano Scalera4, Giorgia Gandolfi1, Salvatore Milite5, Konstantin Bräutigam6,7, Andrea Sottoriva5, Trevor A. Graham6, Leonardo Egidi8, Biagio Ricciuti9, Marcello Maugeri-Saccà10, and Giulio Caravagna1,11

1 Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Geosciences, University of Trieste, Italy
2 Phase IV Clinical Studies Unit, IRCCS Regina Elena National Cancer Institute, 00144 Rome, Italy
3 Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Barcelona, Spain
4 Clinical Trial Center, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Division, IRCCS Regina Elena National Cancer Institute, Rome, Italy
5 Computational Biology Research Centre, Human Technopole, Milan, Italy
6 Centre for Evolution and Cancer, Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom
7 Institute of Medical Genetics and Pathology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland
8 Department of Economics, Business, Mathematics and Statistics “Bruno de Finetti”, University of Trieste, Italy
9 Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
10 Division of Medical Oncology 2, IRCCS Regina Elena National Cancer Institute, Rome, Italy
11 Area Science Park, Trieste, Italy
† These authors contributed equally.

DOI: 10.1038/s41588-026-02666-z

The University of Trieste has inaugurated its first Study&Share classroom, a new learning environment designed to meet the evolving needs of its student community, where individual study is complemented by collaboration, social interaction and knowledge sharing.

Located in Building C9 on the Piazzale Europa Campus, the new classroom has been conceived as a flexible, informal and adaptable space that can accommodate different activities throughout the day. Students will be able to study individually or in groups, work on collaborative projects, meet with classmates, have lunch and enjoy breaks in a welcoming environment featuring modular furniture and up-to-date technology that can be easily reconfigured to suit different needs.

"This new type of classroom was created by listening to our students' needs, and we are delighted to provide them with this flexible space," said Rector Donata Vianelli. "Once the 'UniTS Renewed' redevelopment project is completed, our students will have access to numerous environments that encourage social interaction and the exchange of ideas, fully aligned with the needs of contemporary higher education."

The inauguration of the classroom marks the first milestone of "UniTS Renewed", the University's redevelopment programme aimed at modernising learning spaces and enhancing campus life.

By spring 2027, additional Study&Share classrooms of varying sizes and layouts will be created, all sharing the same vision: to provide spaces that foster not only learning, but also interaction, dialogue and a strong sense of belonging to the University community.

The overall plan includes the refurbishment of 25 classrooms, providing a total of 2,256 student seats across four University campuses, as well as the renovation of 30 study, reading and break areas, for a total of 894 upgraded seats.