UniTS welcomed Sandra Sharry, Director of the National Research System of Panama’s National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation (SENACYT).

The meeting was attended by Mauro Tretiach, Deputy Rector, and Erik Vesselli, Delegate for Technology Transfer and Relations with Research Institutions.

During the discussion, participants explored the role of SENACYT and presented Panama’s national strategy in the field of bioeconomy, aimed at economic diversification, the creation of green jobs and the strengthening of climate resilience through the development of strategic sectors such as sustainable agro-industry, bioenergy, biotechnology and innovative materials.

The possibility of funding PhD positions at UniTS reserved for Panamanian students was also discussed.

Silvia Palmisano, Director of the UniTS School of Specialization in General Surgery, has been appointed member of the European Surgical Association (ESA).

The appointment confirms the value and visibility of the Trieste surgical school within the European context, further strengthening the role of the University as a centre of excellence in medical and surgical education and research.

Founded in 1993, the European Surgical Association is one of the most prestigious surgical organizations in Europe and serves as a leading reference point for the promotion of science and research in the field of surgery. ESA plays a central role as an international forum for presenting state-of-the-art developments and the most advanced innovations in both general and specialist surgery, contributing to the continuous improvement of professional standards.

Its members come from leading European academic and medical institutions and represent excellence in the field, sharing knowledge, experience and research outcomes at an international level.

A day dedicated to togetherness and to the inclusive power of sport, in a fascinating setting where the value of teamwork was cultivated and strengthened paddle stroke after paddle stroke.

On Saturday 15 May, in the Venetian waters facing San Giobbe, with snow-capped mountains in the background, the second edition of Lion Explorer took place: an initiative dedicated to dragon boating and organised by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, in collaboration with Iuav University of Venice and CUS Venezia.

Among the nine University Sports Centres taking part was also CUS Trieste. The participating universities competed on a 150-metre racecourse aboard dragon boats, vessels with a dragon-shaped head and tail, crewed by teams of 12 members each.

After the Dragon Eye Dotting Ceremony, a traditional Chinese ritual performed to bring good fortune to the boats, the competition got underway. In the first round, Trieste finished in second place, behind Insubria and ahead of Udine, while in the second round CUS Trieste had to give way to Padua and Trento. In Final C, Trieste finished second behind Bari, but ahead of Tirana.

The final ranking saw CUS Venezia take first place, followed by Padua, Vienna, Trento, Insubria, Udine, Bari, Trieste and Tirana.

The CUS Trieste team, largely made up of athletes from the volleyball teams and all experiencing a dragon boat for the first time, was composed of:

Viviana Boria (Psychological Sciences and Techniques), Giacomo Camata (Computer Engineering), Stefano Cardu (Electronic and Computer Engineering), Chiara De Vidovich (Primary Education Sciences), Claudio Ellero (Geosciences), Gianmaria Palma (Physics), Tommaso Piscitelli (Mathematics), Isabella Ramani (Mathematics), Marco Stevanella (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Marta Tomasella (Psychological Sciences and Techniques), Michela Sofia Venerus (Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies) and Anna Zanardi (Economics, Business and Management).

Alongside the team, among the accompanying staff, was also the Vice-President of CUS Trieste, Renato Pelessoni, who commented on the day as follows:

“For the second time, we took part in Lion Explorer with great enthusiasm, with a team of six female and six male students from the University of Trieste, who competed in dragon boat races for the first time. For our student-athletes, it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know other universities, share experiences and build new relationships. At CUS Trieste, we strongly believe in the value of days like these, where sport proves once again to be an ideal tool for personal growth. I would also like to highlight the warm welcome and excellent organisation provided by the nautical section of CUS Venezia and by all the organisers: as CUS Trieste, we will draw inspiration from this experience to further improve the Dragon Boat event that we organise every October during Barcolana week in Trieste.”

The two-day Lion Explorer event concluded on Sunday 17 May, with students exploring Venice and its lagoon aboard the dragon boats, including a stop and visit to the island of Burano.

Dr Antonella Muzzo, research fellow at the University of Trieste, has received the ASCPT Presidential Trainee Award, a prestigious recognition granted by the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT) to early-career researchers who have distinguished themselves for scientific excellence.

Each year, the Scientific Program Committee selects the highest-scoring abstracts submitted by clinical pharmacologists and translational researchers in training, granting them special recognition as part of the Society’s Annual Meeting.

The award was granted for the doctoral research project carried out at the Department of Medical, Surgical and Health Sciences of the University of Trieste and at IRCCS Burlo Garofolo, under the supervision of Professors Marianna Lucafò, Giuliana Decorti and Gabriele Stocco.

The work was presented as a poster entitled “Thiopurine treatment responses in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease are determined by a newly identified TRIM32-cGAS-STING pathway: a pharmacokinetic study in organoids”.

The project also involved the Department of Life Sciences, with which Professors Lucafò and Meroni and Dr Lazzari are affiliated.

The study provides an integrated analysis of the molecular and pharmacokinetic mechanisms that regulate the response to thiopurines in paediatric patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), using an innovative, patient-specific preclinical model: intestinal organoids derived from patients affected by IBD.

For the first time, the research demonstrates that thiopurines exert direct pharmacological effects on intestinal epithelial cells, in addition to their well-known systemic immunosuppressive actions. The findings also highlight significant interindividual variability in treatment response, mainly determined by pharmacokinetic factors.

At the intestinal cell level, thiopurines show an anti-inflammatory effect by acting on specific molecular mechanisms involved in inflammation, including the TRIM32-cGAS-STING and NF-κB/p65 pathways.

Overall, these findings contribute to the development of personalised therapeutic strategies and to the identification of new potential therapeutic approaches in the paediatric field.

Electric boating is today an increasingly strategic meeting point for engineering expertise, sustainability and industrial innovation.

Against this backdrop, the University of Trieste took part in the sixth edition of Villa d’Este Style Electric Yachting in Cernobbio, on Lake Como, an event dedicated to the development of electric technologies applied to sustainable navigation.

Representing UniTS were Giorgio Sulligoi, Director of the Department of Engineering and Architecture, and Vittorio Bucci, Coordinator of the Degree Programme in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, together with a delegation of students from programmes most closely connected to energy, naval engineering and technologies applied to mobility. Among them were also members of two of the University’s student teams: UniTS Racing Team, engaged in the development of electric car prototypes for university competitions, and Audace Sailing Team, active in the design of innovative and sustainable boats.

The experience is part of UniTS’s broader commitment to enhancing its student teams as spaces for applied learning. It also represents an opportunity to encourage, in the future, the creation of a new student group capable of bringing together the expertise of UniTS Racing Team and Audace Sailing Team.

“Electric boating,” underlines Giorgio Sulligoi, “is a rapidly expanding sector. At UniTS, we have been working for many years on electric applications in the naval and boating fields, integrating multidisciplinary expertise ranging from onboard electrical systems to the design of innovative solutions for the maritime sector.”

Monitoring the progression of advanced cutaneous melanoma through a simple blood draw or urine sample, in order to obtain information that can help personalise therapies and make them less invasive for patients. This is the goal of EXOMEL, the new research project coordinated by the University of Trieste, which will study the use of liquid biopsy to monitor a form of cancer in which the ability to observe disease progression accurately can have a significant impact on therapeutic decisions.

The project, entitled “Exosomal microRNA from liquid biopsy for the monitoring and personalisation of treatments for advanced cutaneous melanoma”, aims to develop and validate innovative diagnostic technologies, shared among the clinical centres involved, to make treatments increasingly targeted, effective and tailored to the characteristics of each patient. The most innovative aspect concerns the use of urine samples as a form of liquid biopsy: EXOMEL will study exosomes, small vesicles involved in communication between cells, and the microRNAs they carry, with the aim of identifying a combination of biological signals that may help distinguish patients who respond to immunotherapy from those who do not.

EXOMEL is funded by the Interreg VI-A Italy–Austria 2021–2027 cross-border cooperation programme, with support from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), for a total amount of 572,055.59 euros. The project, which will end on 31 March 2028, confirms the value of international cooperation in cancer research, bringing together healthcare institutions, universities and technological expertise from Italy and Austria.

The University of Trieste acts as lead partner and coordinates the project activities through its Department of Medicine, Surgery and Health Sciences, involving a research team composed of Serena Bonin, Iris Zalaudek, Ilaria Gandin and Gabriele Grassi.

The partnership also includes the South Tyrol Health Authority, with the hospitals of Bruneck and Bolzano, an Italian small and medium-sized enterprise, and the University Clinic of Dermatology and Allergology of Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg.

“At the heart of EXOMEL,” explains Serena Bonin, lecturer in Technical Sciences of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Trieste and principal investigator of the project, “is the development and validation of liquid biopsy, a diagnostic approach that makes it possible to obtain relevant information about the disease from biological samples that are easy to collect, such as blood or urine. Today, plasma liquid biopsy is used mainly in research to detect circulating tumour DNA, that is DNA carrying tumour-specific mutations. However, this approach requires the mutations to be monitored to be already known. With EXOMEL, we instead want to study the microRNAs contained in exosomes, vesicles through which cells communicate with one another, to verify whether a combination of them can help discriminate between patients with advanced cutaneous melanoma who respond to immunotherapy and those who do not.

At present,” Bonin adds, “there are no predictive biomarkers used in hospital practice to systematically guide these therapeutic choices. For this reason, the aim of the project is to contribute to the development of tools that are more accessible, repeatable and potentially useful for the personalisation of treatments.”

During the project, liquid biopsy technology will be extended to the study of urine samples and applied in the clinical centres involved through the development of common and standardised protocols. This step will make it possible to test the robustness of the approach in different clinical settings, harmonise diagnostic practices among the partner healthcare facilities and foster the creation of a stable collaborative network between Italy and Austria.

The expected results may also have an impact beyond the strictly academic and clinical fields. EXOMEL may contribute to the development of new diagnostic tools based on liquid biopsy, opening up possible prospects for technology transfer and industrial valorisation of research, including through the interest of companies active in the biomedical and diagnostic sectors.

Europe Day is celebrated on 9 May, marking the Schuman Declaration of 1950, the political act that set the process of European integration in motion. It is an opportunity to return to the origins of a project that transformed cooperation between States into a stable framework for peace, law, economic growth and international presence.

The proposal put forward by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman was to place Franco-German coal and steel production under joint control, opening the initiative to other European countries. From that first nucleus came the European Coal and Steel Community, the premise for the later European Communities and today’s European Union. The choice was not merely economic: coal and steel lay at the heart of industry, reconstruction and the very possibility of waging war. Placing them under common management meant creating a concrete bond between countries that, only a few years earlier, had fought one another.

“With the Declaration of 9 May 1950,” observes Georg Meyr, Professor of History of International Relations, “Robert Schuman proposed a new model of international relations, going far beyond the logic of simple economic cooperation between States.” The context was that of a Europe struggling to recover from the Second World War and from the decline of its global primacy, consumed by the fractures of the first half of the twentieth century.

The strength of the proposal lay precisely in its visionary realism. It did not imagine Europe as a finished construction, but as a process: starting from essential functions, building common institutions, and gradually making what once seemed impossible both advantageous and necessary. The coal and steel sector, Meyr recalls, had been one of the most sensitive areas of tension between France and Germany; its supranational management pointed to a new path, open to those States ready to join. Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands did so immediately, while the geopolitics of the time effectively excluded countries under Soviet influence.

One of the most original features of European integration can be found in this method: not the abolition of States, but the gradual construction of shared sovereignty. “Only the functionalist approach,” Meyr underlines, “makes the realisation of the United States of Europe imaginable in perspective.”

Over time, that political intuition has acquired an increasingly broad legal form. “The European Union,” explains Giuseppe Pascale, Professor of International Law, “has not always been a Union.” Its roots lie in the European Economic Communities, established in 1957 by the Treaties of Rome, in which States acted mainly according to the intergovernmental method and decisions were almost always adopted unanimously.

Since then, the framework has changed profoundly. The European Union as we know it today is governed by the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007, that is, by the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Above all, however, it has extended its field of action well beyond the original common market. “The Communities,” Pascale recalls, “had no competence in the protection of fundamental rights, nor did they provide for a common European citizenship. In these areas, by contrast, the European Union is now competent, with countless advantages for anyone living on European soil.”

This is one of the less visible, yet most far-reaching, steps in the European construction: the market has also become a space of citizenship, and economic institutions have generated rights, procedures, safeguards, forms of representation and instruments for common action. The decision-making process also reflects this transformation. Most EU acts, Pascale notes, are no longer adopted unanimously but by majority vote, a sign of the growing interconnection among Member States and of an institutional solidarity that has become part of the European legal order.

The EU has also equipped itself with legal rules in the field of diplomatic relations and with its own diplomatic agents, who represent it in third countries and before other international organisations within the framework of the European External Action Service. “From 1957 to today,” Pascale concludes, “the federalist framework has therefore made significant progress, including and above all on the legal level.”

The question today is whether this architecture is sufficient in a more fragmented and competitive international context. For Federico Donelli, Professor of International Relations, the European Union remains “one of the few actors capable of combining economic weight, regulatory strength and a multilateral vocation.” This is a rare combination, which has made Europe influential not only for what it produces or trades, but also for the rules, standards and principles it is able to project externally.

The crises of recent years, however, have revealed the limits of a model that, in order to truly matter, must be supported by a greater capacity for action. Industry, energy, technology and security have become central dimensions in global power relations. In this perspective, Donelli refers to the Draghi agenda, which places common investment, innovation, defence, the reduction of strategic dependencies and deeper integration of European markets at the centre.

“If it is to truly count in the world,” Donelli observes, “the EU must transform its internal interdependence into external political power, overcoming decision-making fragmentation and delays in the implementation of common policies.” The challenge is not to replicate traditional models of force, but to acquire the capacity to defend and promote its interests without giving up its own normative specificity.

In a system in which trade, energy and technology are increasingly used by global actors as levers of power, Europe cannot limit itself to being a large regulated market. It must continue to be a project founded on law, cooperation and values, but with faster, more cohesive and more incisive instruments.

There is also another aspect that is often overlooked in public debate: Europe’s role in progressively bringing closer together economies that started from very different conditions. “Those who criticise the European Union,” says Luciano Mauro, Professor of Political Economy, “often forget that its history is also a history of convergence, that is, of reducing economic distances among Europeans.”

Since the Treaty of Rome of 1957, integration has fostered growth and helped less wealthy countries catch up. The accession of Ireland in 1973, Greece in 1981, and Spain and Portugal in 1986 brought into the Communities economies that were still far from the more developed core. In the 1980s, Mauro recalls, Spain stood at around 70–75% of the European average, while Portugal was around 55–60%. After the single market of 1992, structural funds and foreign investment helped narrow the gap.

A similar process took place after the eastern enlargement of 2004–2007. Poland, for example, rose from around 51–52% of the EU average in 2004 to approximately 80% in recent years. “This is what convergence means,” Mauro explains: “those who start further behind can move closer to the wealthier countries. In concrete terms, it means more equality among European citizens.”

In this reading, the economic dimension is not separate from the political one. European integration has not only created a larger market; it has also helped reduce historical differences between countries, territories and citizens. For Mauro, rejecting the Union often also means rejecting this reduction of distances: “perhaps this is precisely what nationalisms do not like.”

What emerges is an image of Europe that is far removed both from rhetorical celebration and from oversimplified criticism. The Union is at once historical memory, legal order, economic space of convergence and an international actor still in the making. Its strength has been to transform national interests into common institutions; its difficulty today is to do so quickly enough in a world where strategic competition, technological transitions, energy dependencies and new political fractures call for more timely decisions.

This reflection is also part of the history of the University of Trieste and of its presence in Gorizia. The degree programme in International and Diplomatic Sciences, established in 1989 at the Gorizia University Campus and celebrated in 2024 on the thirty-fifth anniversary of its foundation, has long been a space for education and analysis dedicated to international relations, diplomacy, European politics, international economics and comparative political systems.

Gorizia, a border city and today a European laboratory, makes the meaning of this reflection particularly concrete. Here, Europe is not only an institutional framework, but a reality that crosses territories, languages, memories and everyday practices. In a place marked by the history of the twentieth century and by its dividing lines, studying Europe means looking closely at what integration has made possible and at the questions that remain open.

For this reason too, Europe Day offers an opportunity to connect memory, education and civic responsibility. In Gorizia, within the degree programme in International and Diplomatic Sciences, the European project continues to be studied not as an acquired legacy, but as a historical, legal, economic and political process to be understood in its evolution and in the challenges it faces today.

The security of supply chains is now one of the European Union’s central concerns, especially in strategic sectors such as critical minerals and rare earths. It is from this perspective that the new policy report by Federico Donelli, Professor of International Relations at the University of Trieste, and Riccardo Gasco begins, identifying Turkey as a possible partner in strengthening Europe’s industrial resilience.

Published by the Istanbul Political Research Institute (IstanPol) as part of the Foreign Policy Program series (April 2026-004), with the support of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Foundation Turkey Representation, the report, entitled Critical Minerals, Rare Earths, and the Türkiye–EU Partnership. Supply Chain Resilience and the Restructuring of the Global Order, examines the relationship between strategic raw materials, economic security and European industrial policy, focusing on the role Turkey could play in building more resilient supply chains.

The report shows how supply chains have taken on growing importance in international competition and highlights, in particular, the issue of rare earth processing and refining. According to the authors, it is especially in this segment of the value chain that one of Europe’s main vulnerabilities can now be seen, also in light of the strong concentration of capacity in China.

Against this backdrop, Turkey is presented as a potentially important partner for the European Union, both because of its geographical proximity and because of its industrial base, refining capacity and already established economic ties with the European market. The paper also points to the existence of a Turkish national strategy aimed at strengthening the critical minerals sector and recalls, among the relevant factors, the role the country already plays in certain supply chains.

Alongside these strengths, the study also highlights the limits of the current European framework. The authors note that, although the Critical Raw Materials Act sets out important strategic goals, it is still facing difficulties in the implementation phase. At the same time, the report identifies a number of open issues for Turkey, linked to governance in the mining sector, environmental standards, deposit certification and the broader political and diplomatic context shaping relations with Brussels.

“The report,” explains Federico Donelli, “also connects the issue of critical minerals to the broader evolution of the international order. From this perspective, the conflict with Iran is cited as a factor that has made even more evident the interdependence between energy, logistics, the defence industry and raw material supply, reinforcing the need for Europe to equip itself with more effective tools of economic and strategic resilience.”

In its concluding section, the report sets out six recommendations addressed to the European Commission, Member States and the Turkish government. Among them, the authors point to the opportunity to launch a formal strategic partnership between the European Union and Turkey on critical raw materials, direct European investment towards processing and refining infrastructure in Turkey, and establish a joint working group focused on supply chain resilience and the modernisation of the Customs Union.

The paper also suggests making use of the current phase of regional instability to strengthen coordination between the two sides in the energy field, developing a joint pilot plant for rare earth processing, and ensuring a more timely European presence in the main international forums where priorities and frameworks for the sector are being defined.

Federico Donelli’s contribution is part of his broader research path devoted to new geopolitical configurations and the role of regional actors in the Euro-Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and African areas. In this case, the focus on relations between the European Union and Turkey provides a useful perspective on an issue that directly affects Europe’s industrial policy, economic security and international positioning.

UniTS welcomed today Isabel Capeloa Gil, Rector of the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon. The visit aimed to strengthen cooperation between the two universities within the Transform4Europe (T4EU) Alliance and to support the internationalisation of PhD programmes.

More specifically, following the doctoral Summer School organised in 2025 by C.U.R. E. – the Centre for Interdisciplinary Advanced Studies of Saarland University – together with the Zentrum für Literaturforschung in Berlin, which is also scheduled for 2026, Professor Maria Carolina Foi, Professor of German Literature at UniTS, initiated the collaboration between UniTS and the Catholic University of Portugal in the field of doctoral education.

This cooperation adds to existing collaborations within T4EU activities and to the joint planning of a new Master’s degree programme in Romance languages, also involving the University of Alicante and Jean Monnet University Saint-Étienne.

The meeting was attended by Rector Donata Vianelli; Alberto Pallavicini, UniTS representative for the Transform4Europe European Alliance; Maria Carolina Foi, Professor of German Literature; and Sergia Adamo, Professor of Literary Criticism and Comparative Literatures and Deputy Director of the Department of Humanities.

It was a weekend full of sporting achievements for the sailors of CUS Trieste, competing for the first time in two major international regattas: the Naval Academies Regatta in Livorno and the Elafiti Slalom Regata in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The two Trieste teams were invited by CUS Bari for the Dubrovnik regatta and by the Italian Naval Academy for the International Sailing Week, a major sporting event now in its fifth decade.

The high level of competition in the two international regattas gave the Trieste teams the opportunity to compete against strong opponents. In Livorno, the crew made up of helmsman Luca Centazzo (first-year student in Economics, taught in English), Nicolò Coslovich (first-year Physics student) and Anna Tesser (first-year Management Engineering student) took 1st place in the National Tridente Regatta and also won the Under 23 category aboard a Tridente 16 one-design boat provided by the Livorno Naval Academy.

“It was an incredible four days,” said Nicolò Coslovich, “because it gave us the opportunity to enjoy a highly stimulating competitive experience and to discover the world of the Livorno Academy and of naval academies from all over the world. Looking back at the regattas, the three of us immediately developed good understanding and a very positive team spirit, even though it was the first time we had all sailed together on the same boat. Our starts were definitely our strong point, although we struggled a little with upwind speed, which forced us to make more complex tactical choices. However, we managed to overcome the difficulties and achieve excellent results.”

In Dubrovnik, the mixed CUS crew, made up of nine sailors — one professor and eight students — competed on an X-41 boat provided by CUS Bari. At the end of the three coastal races, the team finished 1st among the Italian crews and 2nd in the university ranking, on equal points with the winning university, the host institution.

Sailing under the CUS colours were Prof. Piergiorgio Trevisan (Professor of English Language and Translation at the Department of Humanities), Carolina Bontempo (20, first-year Chemistry student), Sara Calici (20, second-year Business and Management student), Leonardo Centuori (21, third-year Naval Engineering student), Lorenzo Centuori (19, first-year International Economics student), Kim Francesco Magnani (20, second-year Naval Engineering student), Giovanni Marchese (20, second-year Financial Economics student), Julia Rubesa Perini (19, first-year Business and Management student) and Samuele Trovò (20, second-year Computer Engineering student).

“I think this kind of experience is unique and extremely valuable,” said Prof. Trevisan. “I believe that CUS and the University should continue along this path. Personally, having less sailing experience than the students, I learned a great deal, especially about the tactical management of the races, and I was able to admire up close a group of enterprising young people and skilled sailors.”

“We competed,” added Kim Francesco Magnani, tactician of the crew, “in two days of racing marked by ideal wind conditions, during which we showed great solidity as a team, standing out for consistently precise and effective starts, as well as excellent cohesion on board.”

Dubrovnik event website: https://www.jk-orsan.hr/elafitislalom.html

Livorno event website: https://www.settimanavelica.it/