Maria Carolina Foi, Full Professor of German Literature at the Department of Humanities of the University of Trieste, has been elected a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (German Academy for Language and Literature).

Founded in 1949 and based in Darmstadt, the Academy brings together writers, scholars, and intellectuals who have made outstanding contributions to German-language culture. Its membership also includes jurists and scientists distinguished by their literary sensitivity. Among its members have been figures such as Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, Ingeborg Bachmann, and Elias Canetti. The Academy also awards the Georg Büchner Prize, the most prestigious lifetime literary award for authors writing in German.

After beginning her academic studies in Law at the University of Padua, Maria Carolina Foi graduated in German Literature from the University of Trieste under the supervision of Claudio Magris.

She subsequently received prestigious research fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She also served as an External Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies. Since 2008, she has been Full Professor of German Literature at the University of Trieste. Her main research interests include the relationship between literature and law, Viennese Modernism, and Italian-German cultural transfer. She has translated and edited Italian editions of classics by authors including Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Schiller.

From 2020 to 2024, she served as Distinguished Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Berlin, appointed by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. In 2025, she joined the jury of the Deutscher Buchpreis, Germany's most prestigious annual award for the best German-language novel.

Her election to the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung confirms Professor Foi's international standing and represents a source of particular pride for the University of Trieste, whose excellence in research has been recognised by one of Europe's most prestigious cultural institutions.

The University of Trieste was represented by Stefano Parolai, Director of the Department of Mathematics and Geosciences, at the meeting "Seismic Risk Prevention in Italy", held at the Italian Senate.

During the event, which brought together institutional representatives, experts, and members of the National Civil Protection System, Professor Parolai presented the contribution of the scientific community to the Italian National Civil Protection Service. He highlighted the essential role of research in advancing the understanding of seismic phenomena, assessing seismic risk, and supporting decision-making to protect communities.

Professor Parolai's participation reflects his role as Deputy Representative for the Seismic Risk Sector of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, the technical and scientific advisory body to the Italian Civil Protection Department. The Commission brings together leading experts from universities and research institutions and provides scientific assessments of the country's major natural and human-induced risks, supporting activities related to forecasting, prevention, and emergency management.

Professor Parolai's appointment to this Commission is an important recognition of the expertise developed at the University of Trieste in the fields of geosciences and seismology. The involvement of a UniTS faculty member in a strategic national advisory body underscores the valuable contribution that university research can make to public institutions in shaping effective policies for risk reduction and the safety of communities.

Which mammals live within the municipal territory of Trieste? Where are they concentrated? How numerous are they? For the first time, these questions can now be answered thanks to research coordinated by Alessio Mortelliti, Professor of Ecology at the Department of Life Sciences of the University of Trieste.

The study represents the first systematic survey ever conducted in the Municipality of Trieste on the presence, distribution and abundance of medium- and large-sized mammals. It fills a significant gap in knowledge about the city’s natural heritage and provides essential data for biodiversity conservation and land-use planning.

The research was carried out between November 2025 and February 2026 using a fully non-invasive methodology based on camera trapping. A total of 156 camera traps were installed across 78 monitoring sites distributed throughout the Municipality’s natural and peri-urban habitats, amounting to more than 2,300 observation nights. The cameras, automatically triggered by the passage of animals, made it possible to document wildlife presence without interfering with animal behaviour.

Overall, 18 mammal species were recorded, confirming the high naturalistic value of the Trieste area. Among the most widespread species were roe deer, wild boar and golden jackal. Of particular interest were the detections of the wildcat and European polecat, species of conservation relevance whose presence in an area so close to the city represents a finding of considerable scientific value.

In addition to compiling a checklist of the species present, the researchers used advanced statistical models to produce the first maps showing the probability of occurrence and abundance of the different species across the various environments of the municipal area, from forests and karst landscapes to agricultural and peri-urban zones. This information will make it possible to better understand the relationship between wildlife and habitat and to identify the areas where certain species are most concentrated.

“The results show that Trieste hosts a particularly rich and diverse mammal community,” explains Alessio Mortelliti. “This is not a phenomenon linked to climate change, but rather to the distinctive position of the Trieste area, which is closely connected from an ecological point of view with the Karst and the natural areas of Slovenia. This environmental continuity, together with the expansion of woodland across the Karst in recent decades, has favoured the presence of numerous wild species even close to the city.”

The data collected provide a valuable tool for updating knowledge of the fauna within the municipal territory and may support future activities related to biodiversity conservation, wildlife management, and urban and environmental planning by the Municipality of Trieste.

The project "Generazione Impresa – Young Entrepreneurs of Confcommercio Trieste Meet the Innovators Community Lab (ICL)", developed through the collaboration between the Young Entrepreneurs Group of Confcommercio Trieste and the University of Trieste's Innovators Community Lab, has been selected among the winners of the second edition of the "Best Practices GGI 2026" award, promoted by the National Young Entrepreneurs Group of Confcommercio.

The award, presented by a national evaluation committee on the basis of the quality and impact of the submitted projects, recognizes initiatives capable of transforming ideas and expertise into tangible opportunities for local communities, businesses, and society.

The project was created with the aim of building a lasting bridge between academia and the business world through an innovative Business Speed Dating format. Starting in September, students, PhD candidates, early-career researchers, and entrepreneurs will take part in a series of short, structured meetings followed by networking sessions.

The initiative is designed to foster an entrepreneurial mindset among younger generations, encourage the development of entrepreneurial skills, and create meaningful opportunities for dialogue between innovative ideas and market needs. Entrepreneurs will share their experience and strategic vision, while students will have the opportunity to present their projects, test solutions, and receive valuable feedback to support their professional and entrepreneurial development.

The University of Trieste's Innovators Community Lab will contribute to the implementation of the project by providing its facilities, engaging students, PhD candidates, and early-career researchers, and supporting both the design and facilitation of the meetings. The ICL will also bring expertise in innovation, prototyping, design thinking, and business modelling, fostering cross-fertilization between research, education, and industry.

The initiative is fully aligned with the mission of the Innovators Community Lab to promote structured collaboration between the University and the local business ecosystem, highlighting the role of entrepreneurs as mentors and students as drivers of innovation. This national recognition confirms the value of a collaborative model aimed at generating new skills, meaningful connections, and sustainable development opportunities for the local community.

UniTS remembers David Clyde Snelling, an extraordinary teacher and humanist, a lover of history and languages, art and music, who has recently passed away.

Having moved to Trieste from England in the early 1970s, he soon joined the then School for Interpreters (SSLMIT) as a lecturer in simultaneous interpretation.

He would remain there for more than 40 years, leaving an indelible mark on the School, of which he also served as Director, and on generations of interpretation students, many of whom went on to become conference interpreters and, thanks in part to his teaching, reached the highest levels of the profession.

His versatility, intellectual vitality, analytical precision, teaching rigour, generosity in his relationships with colleagues and students, and his extensive international network made a fundamental contribution to the life of the institution, helping to consolidate and enhance its prestige worldwide.

Four women and one man, five books exploring science from invisible microorganisms to the sense of touch. Antonella Fioravanti takes readers into the unseen world of microorganisms that sustain the planet's delicate balance (Journey into the Invisible World). Vincenzo Levizzani shows how fog, wind and storms have shaped the course of human history (The History of the World in Ten Storms). Daniela Minerva gives voice to women's knowledge that remained on the margins of mainstream medicine for centuries (Plural Women's Medicine), while Beatrice Mautino explores the uncertainty and vulnerability of those who turn to science at one of life's most fragile moments—illness—in Vertigo. Completing the shortlist is Marta Paterlini's The Thinking Skin, which brings touch—the oldest and perhaps most overlooked of our senses—back to the heart of what makes us human.

These are the five finalists for the fourth edition of the Trieste Next – Science Book of the Year Award, promoted by ItalyPost and the Municipality of Trieste – Department of Education, Schools, Universities, Research, Employment and Innovation, under the scientific leadership of the University of Trieste. Presented as part of the Trieste Next festival, the award celebrates the most significant recent publications that explore and interpret the world of science.

The shortlist was selected by the Award's Scientific Jury, which chose five titles from more than 60 books submitted by publishing houses. The shortlisted authors will take part in the fifteenth edition of Trieste Next, entitled "The Shape of Thought. Interactions between Brains and Intelligences," taking place in Trieste from 25 to 27 September. Throughout the festival, each finalist will present their book in a dedicated event introduced by a member of the Scientific Jury. The winner will be chosen by the Readers' Jury, made up of more than 200 science enthusiasts from across Italy, and will be announced during the award ceremony on Sunday, 27 September at 11:30 a.m. on the Trieste Next main stage.

The Scientific Jury is chaired by Donata Vianelli, Rector of the University of Trieste, and includes: Gabriele Beccaria (Tuttoscienze, La Stampa), Fabrizio Brancoli (Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Gruppo Nem Nord Est Multimedia), Maurizio De Blasio (Councillor for Education, Schools, Universities, Research, Employment and Innovation, Municipality of Trieste), Leonardo De Cosmo (ANSA and Le Scienze), Paola Del Negro (Director General, National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics – OGS), Fabio Pagan, Marco Panara (la Repubblica Affari & Finanza), Nicla Panciera, Paola Pica (Corriere della Sera Innovazione), Caterina Petrillo (President, Area Science Park), Nico Pitrelli (SISSA, Trieste), Davide Re (Avvenire), Fabio Sottocornola (Corriere della Sera), and Camilla Valletti (Managing Editor, L'Indice della Settimana).

"Once again this year, the science books competing for the award reflect a wide range of fields of knowledge that have a profound impact on society. Bringing them to the attention of the ever-growing audience of Trieste Next is precisely our goal: fostering greater awareness of the role science plays in everyday life is essential," said Donata Vianelli, Rector of the University of Trieste.

Silvia Marchesan, Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences (DSCF) of the University of Trieste, has been elected a Member of the Chemistry Division of the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc).

This prestigious recognition acknowledges Professor Marchesan's pioneering contributions to the field of nanomaterials science, particularly her research on the role of chirality in peptide self-assembly, which has provided fundamental insights for the design and development of functional peptide-based nanomaterials. Her election also recognizes her commitment to promoting interdisciplinary research, science communication, and dialogue across disciplines, cultures, and genders.

"I am deeply honoured to join the Chemistry Division of EurASc," said Silvia Marchesan. "This recognition marks an important milestone for my research group and for our commitment to building collaborations that transcend the boundaries between disciplines and scientific communities. I am delighted to contribute to the Academy's mission of promoting scientific excellence and international cooperation."

The European Academy of Sciences (EurASc) is an independent international organization that brings together some of Europe's most distinguished scientists and engineers to promote excellence in fundamental and interdisciplinary research, strengthen international scientific cooperation, and advance science and technology for the benefit of society. EurASc works alongside and complements the activities of national academies and the European Academies' Science Advisory Council (EASAC).

Professor Marchesan joins EurASc's Chemistry Division alongside several distinguished colleagues from the University of Trieste already serving in the Academy: Professors Paolo Fornasiero and Federico Rosei, members of the Materials Division from the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Maurizio Prato, Professor Emeritus at the University of Trieste.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has presented the largest and most detailed image ever produced of the centre of the Milky Way, the so-called Galactic Bulge: an extremely bright region densely populated with stars. This extraordinary “photograph” opens up new possibilities for scientists, who will be able to confirm the possible existence of exoplanets in this region and measure their mass through the tiny variations in starlight over time.

The Euclid Space Telescope acquired this enormous image in around 26 hours. It is a mosaic made up of nine pointings of its visible-light camera, each covering a portion of the sky larger than the full Moon.

In this image, Euclid captured more than 60 million stars, together with nebulae and star clusters. This extremely populated region of our galaxy is an ideal environment for the search for exoplanets through microlensing.

The news from Euclid is extraordinary: mapping the Galactic Bulge with such precision opens up unique prospects,” commented Gabriele Cescutti, UniTS Professor of Stellar Astrophysics. “Although this specific observing campaign was designed to exploit microlensing and search for exoplanets, such a density of stellar data is also extremely valuable for our research lines at UniTS. In our Department of Physics, we have been working for years on chemical evolution and ‘galactic archaeology’. We use spectroscopic and chemical data from stars to reconstruct, through theoretical models, the early history, formation timescales and origin of the elements in the bulge and nucleus of the Milky Way. High-resolution mosaics, such as the one produced by Euclid, are fundamental to understanding the precise distribution and nature of these stellar populations.

The University of Trieste is responsible for the operations of the two scientific instruments at the heart of the Euclid mission: VIS (Visible Instrument) and NISP (Near Infrared Spectrometer Photometer). In detail, UniTS researchers hold responsibility and coordination roles in several Key Projects dedicated to the scientific exploitation of Data Release 1 (DR1), expected around mid-2027, which concerns the study of cosmology through the statistical properties of the distribution and evolution of galaxies. UniTS also contributes to the production of cosmological numerical simulations based on High Performance Computing methodologies.

Image credits: European Space Agency - ESA.

Ten million cells analysed in less than two hours, with memory usage approximately three times lower than the best existing tools and speeds up to forty times faster on the largest datasets compared with the best existing tools. This is the remarkable result achieved by a group of researchers from the University of Trieste, Area Science Park, SISSA and Human Technopole, who developed DEVIL (Differential Expression with Variational Inference Learning), a new high-performance computational tool. The work has been published in Nature Communications.

Understanding which genes are active in cells is one of the keys to understanding diseases and developing new therapies. Today, the most advanced technologies make it possible to measure gene activity in millions of cells from dozens or hundreds of patients, generating an unprecedented amount of data for biomedical research. This revolution, however, brings with it two major challenges: on the one hand, the risk of errors in data interpretation; on the other, the difficulty of analysing such large volumes of information.

The first challenge is computational: analysing millions of cells requires enormous computing power. Traditional methods are too slow and consume too much memory to handle these volumes: a bottleneck that risks undermining the advantages offered by new data collection technologies. The second challenge is statistical. Cells collected from the same patient resemble one another more than they resemble cells from different patients, because they share the same individual biology, the same environment and the same personal characteristics. Ignoring this fact — as many currently used tools do — can lead to distorted statistical conclusions, with the risk of identifying as “significant” cellular changes that are not actually significant, or, conversely, of missing real ones.

To address these two issues, the researchers, thanks to DEVIL, succeeded in combining statistical rigour and computational speed in an innovative way. From a computational perspective, DEVIL, which was also developed with the support of Fondazione AIRC, was designed to make efficient use of the most advanced parallel computing architectures typical of artificial intelligence. Moreover, DEVIL is not only faster, but also uses less memory — a far from secondary detail. This means that analyses previously reserved for major computing centres can now become accessible to smaller research infrastructures and laboratories. From a statistical perspective, DEVIL addresses the problem through a Bayesian approach that correctly accounts for the structure of the data, treating cells from the same patient as correlated and therefore separating differences between patients from genuine differences in cellular activity.

“This work would not have been possible without ORFEO, the Area Science Park data centre, recently upgraded thanks to funding from Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan,” says Stefano Cozzini, Director of Area Science Park’s Research and Technological Innovation Institute. “The availability of latest-generation GPUs, characterised by extremely high computing performance, together with careful optimisation of the algorithms for this architecture, developed by our team, now makes it possible to use DEVIL to address and solve problems on a significantly larger scale. We are very satisfied: it is not often that one can rely on a team with such high-level expertise, capable of making the most of the resources acquired.”

“Differential expression, that is, the statistical analysis that identifies which genes are significantly more or less active across two or more different biological conditions,” explains Giulio Caravagna of the University of Trieste, “is a mature technology. However, the transition to single-cell analysis has introduced statistical and computational issues that make the integrated analysis of large patient cohorts complex. Our work was developed precisely to overcome this bottleneck, combining methodological innovation and high-performance computing in order to scale up to the analysis of millions of cells from hundreds of patients.”

“In the development of DEVIL, the synergy between classical and Bayesian statistical tools represents a key strength within the reference oncological literature,” says Leonardo Egidi of the University of Trieste, “and makes DEVIL an efficient computational protocol with a strong methodological characterisation. Future developments could involve spatio-temporal models for multiple patients and introduce further computational approximations based on theoretical properties that are currently under study: a valuable combination of statistical, computational and biological expertise.”

DEVIL was tested on two concrete biological case studies. In the first, focused on the identification of immune system cells, the tool proved more precise and specific in recognising relevant biological functions. In the second, concerning the ageing of human muscle tissue, it identified age-related transcriptional changes in a more stable and biologically grounded way, reducing noise and highlighting key processes for subsequent analyses.

DEVIL has been released as free and open-source software, available to laboratories and hospitals around the world, paving the way for a new generation of large-scale genomic analyses for the study of tumours, degenerative diseases and the development of personalised medicine.

Andrea Pappalardo, a student in the Master’s Degree Programme in Diplomacy and International Cooperation at the University of Trieste, has been appointed Italy’s Youth Delegate to the United Nations for the 2026/2027 mandate.

The appointment was announced by SIOI – the Italian Society for International Organization, which has implemented the United Nations Youth Delegate Programme – UNYD in Italy since 2017, in agreement with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. The 2026/27 edition of the Programme is held under the patronage of the Italian Youth Agency and with the support of Reale Foundation.

Born in 2003, Pappalardo is originally from south-eastern Sicily and lives in Gorizia, where he obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in International and Diplomatic Sciences and where he is continuing his Master’s studies in the fields of diplomacy, cooperation and international relations.

His appointment follows a national selection process that assessed over 300 applications. Together with Sofia Gioria, a student at Roma Tre University, Pappalardo will represent the views, ideas and priorities of younger Italian generations at the 81st United Nations General Assembly and in the main national and international institutional contexts.

“I take on this role with a great sense of responsibility and gratitude,” said Andrea Pappalardo. “My aim will be to help give voice to young Italians, promoting the values of dialogue, cooperation and participation. I strongly believe in a culture of peace, capable of countering hatred and intolerance, and in the role that younger generations can play in shaping the present and the future.”

Pappalardo’s path combines academic education, civic engagement and student participation. He has been a volunteer with the Italian Red Cross for over six years, an experience that has strengthened his commitment to service, solidarity and the building of relationships based on trust. For the past three years, he has also been part of MSOI Gorizia, the local section of the Student Movement for International Organization, where he served as Deputy Secretary and was later elected Secretary for two consecutive terms.

The mandate of the Youth Delegates to the United Nations will begin in September with the handover from the 2025/2026 Delegates and will include, in addition to the mission to New York, the organisation of events and meetings at universities, schools, institutions, bodies and associations.

Rector Donata Vianelli described the appointment as “a source of great satisfaction and pride for me and for the entire academic community of the University of Trieste. This achievement not only rewards the talent and dedication of students such as Mr Pappalardo, but also confirms the excellence of the educational path offered by our University in the field of international relations.”