The 32nd edition of the international Bovec Summer School concluded on 25 July. Over the course of two weeks, it brought together 32 students from Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, including five from the University of Trieste. The 2026 edition focused on the relationship between artificial intelligence, multilingual communication, and cultural and digital transformation. The Summer School was held from 12 to 25 July in the Slovenian town of Bovec, in the heart of the Alps-Adriatic region.

The programme combined intensive courses in Italian, Slovenian, Croatian, German and Friulian with lectures and workshops exploring the opportunities and challenges of applying artificial intelligence to languages. Particular attention was devoted to the contribution of new technologies to translation and language learning, the protection of less widely spoken languages, and digital inclusion, while also addressing the risks associated with algorithmic bias and the limited representation of minority language communities.

Organised by the University of Klagenfurt, the Summer School is held in partnership with the Universities of Trieste, Udine, Ljubljana, Primorska, Rijeka and Osijek. The initiative is one of the longest-running examples of university cooperation in the Alps-Adriatic region, bringing together language education, academic discussion and dialogue among young people from different cultural backgrounds.

Alongside classroom activities, the programme included opportunities to engage with the local area, cultural events and a day trip to Ljubljana, where participants visited the Jožef Stefan Institute and its nuclear research reactor. The experience enabled students to develop language, digital and intercultural skills, while building relationships across national borders.

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 14th edition of the Ciamician Summer School, organised by the University of Trieste’s Department of Engineering and Architecture, has come to an end. Nineteen students and PhD candidates from seven countries gathered at Passo Monte Croce Comelico, in the heart of the Dolomites, to explore key aspects of the energy transition alongside leading experts in the field.

Selected from around forty applications submitted by candidates from Italian and European universities, the participants followed an interdisciplinary programme focusing on the main challenges of decarbonisation: sustainable construction materials, renewable energy sources, the evolution of the electricity system, sustainable mobility, critical raw materials, and the economic, social, geopolitical and regulatory implications of the energy transition.

The Summer School brought together 22 lecturers from Italian and European universities, research institutions and companies, including University College London, the Technical University of Munich, Hasselt University, the Polytechnic University of Milan, the University of Padua, the University of Salerno, Area Science Park and CNR-INM. The opening lecture was delivered by climatologist Filippo Giorgi, one of the authors recognised with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The speakers also included internationally renowned experts Paul Ekins of UCL and Carlo Bottasso of TUM.

Six participants received scholarships covering their registration fees thanks to the support of Edilgroup, a holding company committed to developing sustainable solutions for the construction sector, a strategic industry for reducing CO₂ emissions and achieving the objectives of the energy transition.

Named after Trieste-born chemist Giacomo Ciamician, one of the first scientists to recognise the potential of solar energy, the Summer School was established in 2010 and co-founded by Maurizio Fermeglia, Rector Emeritus of the University of Trieste, who recently passed away. This year’s edition was dedicated to his memory.

Fabrizio Sors, tenure-track Assistant Professor of General Psychology at the Department of Life Sciences of the University of Trieste, has been elected to the Managing Council of the European Federation of Sport Psychology (FEPSAC).

FEPSAC brings together researchers, practitioners and institutions active in research, education and the application of sport psychology to physical activity and human performance. Through conferences, working groups, publications and educational initiatives, it supports scientific exchange and collaboration across the field.

During his term, Sors will take part in the work of the Managing Council and in the Federation’s initiatives, contributing in particular to collaboration between researchers and practitioners, interdisciplinary exchange and the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

The appointment builds on Sors’s previous involvement in the European scientific community. At the time of his election, he was serving a second term as coordinator of the Research Department of the European Network of Young Specialists in Sport Psychology (ENYSSP), a European network of early-career researchers and practitioners that works with FEPSAC on research and education. The new role may also strengthen links between the Federation’s activities and the sport psychology research developed in Trieste.

The 10th Symposium of the International Association for Lichenology – IAL10, the world’s leading scientific meeting devoted to lichenology, opened today, Monday 27 July, at the University of Trieste. Organised every four years by the International Association for Lichenology, the symposium is being held in Italy for the first time and is bringing researchers from around the world to the University’s Piazzale Europa campus.

Lichenology is the scientific study of lichens, complex organisms that develop through a stable association between a fungus and one or more partners capable of photosynthesis. Found in a wide variety of environments, including some of the most extreme regions on Earth, lichens provide an important model for understanding the mechanisms of symbiosis, adaptation and evolution. Their sensitivity to environmental conditions also makes them valuable tools for monitoring air quality and ecosystems, while their interaction with rocks, buildings and monuments is studied in the field of cultural heritage conservation.

The scientific proceedings, which began today in Building H3, will continue until Friday 31 July. The programme includes five plenary lectures, more than twenty thematic sessions, four workshops, oral presentations and poster sessions. Contributions explore the latest developments in genomics and other “omics” sciences, taxonomy and systematics, symbiosis biology, ecophysiology and biodiversity. Considerable attention is also being devoted to the effects of climate change, ecosystem conservation, the monitoring of urban and natural environments, and the relationship between lichens and historical monuments and buildings.

The plenary lectures are being delivered by Nina Gunde-Cimerman of the University of Ljubljana, Pavel Škaloud of Charles University in Prague, Theo Llewellyn of Imperial College London, Daniel Stanton of the University of Minnesota and Gulnara Tagirdzhanova of Stockholm University. Their presentations address topics including symbioses capable of developing in extreme environments, ecological and evolutionary parallels between lichens and corals, the genetic mechanisms underlying the production of protective substances, lichen responses to climate change and the molecular interactions between the different organisms involved in lichen symbiosis.

The local organisation is coordinated by academics from the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Trieste. The symposium president is Lucia Muggia, Professor of Systematic Botany, while Mauro Tretiach, Professor of General Botany, serves as vice-president. The scientific and organisational secretariat also includes Stefano Martellos, Professor of Systematic Botany, and Fabio Candotto Carniel, Professor of General Botany. The Trieste team is working alongside a national organising committee and an international scientific committee composed of experts from Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States.

Trieste’s bid was selected in 2021 during the previous edition of the symposium, which was held online. The decision recognised the long-standing contribution of the University’s research group to Italian and international lichenology, as well as the city’s geographical position, multicultural character and particularly extensive network of scientific institutions.

The programme is complemented by scientific field trips devoted to observing lichens in their natural environments. Two itineraries took place before the symposium, crossing the south-eastern Alps and central Italy. A further excursion is scheduled from 1 to 3 August in the Italian and Slovenian Classical Karst, with stops including the Val Rosandra Nature Reserve, the Škocjan Caves area, the Trnovo Plateau and the Duino area.

The full programme and further information are available on the official IAL10 website.

EUT – Edizioni Università di Trieste has joined Fondazione LIA as a member. This decision reflects a clear commitment: ensuring that its publications can be accessed by all readers is not merely a legal obligation, but a matter of cultural and social responsibility.

For more than ten years, Fondazione LIA has worked to support publishers in creating accessible digital publications. It collaborates with all stakeholders across the publishing supply chain—including publishers, distributors, aggregators, booksellers and digital libraries—to make the entire reading experience accessible. EUT’s membership strengthens this network and brings a valuable perspective: that of an organisation which produces and disseminates scientific and academic knowledge and is committed to doing so without excluding anyone.

EUT – Edizioni Università di Trieste was established to promote and disseminate the results of the University’s teaching and research activities across all academic disciplines. Its decision to join Fondazione LIA demonstrates how the academic world is developing a more concrete awareness of the importance of accessibility.

“EUT – Edizioni Università di Trieste’s membership of Fondazione LIA represents an important step in strengthening our vision of academic publishing based on openness, sharing and the accessibility of knowledge. The dissemination of knowledge is one of the essential missions of the University of Trieste and its publishing house. We believe that inclusivity must be an indispensable condition, rather than merely a regulatory requirement, if research findings are to reach the widest possible audience and foster the circulation of culture. Our collaboration with Fondazione LIA will enable us to contribute actively to the development of a fairer publishing ecosystem, capable of fully recognising the social role of science communication,” said Elena Tonzar, Head of EUT – Edizioni Università di Trieste.

“We are delighted to welcome EUT as a member of Fondazione LIA. This partnership is particularly significant to us because of EUT’s role in disseminating knowledge, and we hope it will inspire other university publishers to embark on the same path,” said Cristina Mussinelli, Secretary General of Fondazione LIA.

The roots of the Degree Programme in Physiotherapy at UniTS date back to 1976, when Flavia Ruzzier established the School for Rehabilitation Therapists. The initiative grew out of the experience of the Centre for Motor and Functional Rehabilitation, founded ten years earlier by Professor Vincenzo Zuccon, and led to the creation of what remains one of the most distinctive features of physiotherapy education at the University of Trieste: the Palestra Didattica, its clinical teaching facility.

For almost half a century, this facility has provided a unique environment within the Italian higher education system, where clinical care, teaching and research have always coexisted. Each year, second- and third-year students take an active role in the care of patients referred by specialist services, under the supervision of clinical tutors, physiotherapists and university lecturers. Rather than merely observing clinical practice, they participate in the entire rehabilitation pathway: from medical history-taking and physiotherapy assessment to the definition of therapeutic goals, treatment planning and final reassessment, gradually developing greater professional autonomy.

Clinical activity is supported by a comprehensive educational ecosystem that combines peer learning, cooperative learning, clinical simulation, role-playing, multidisciplinary case discussions, journal clubs and advanced technologies, including a virtual anatomy table and motion analysis systems. This approach places particular emphasis on the development of clinical reasoning and decision-making skills, which are now essential competencies for physiotherapists.

“The fiftieth anniversary of the Degree Programme in Physiotherapy offers an opportunity to highlight a history built on expertise, innovation and vision,” says Luigi Murena, Director of the Department of Medicine, Surgery and Health Sciences at the University of Trieste. “The Palestra Didattica demonstrates how our University succeeded, well ahead of the models now recognised internationally, in developing an environment where teaching, research and clinical care are effectively integrated. It is a legacy that continues to educate highly qualified professionals capable of combining clinical expertise, critical thinking, technological innovation and person-centred care.”

Indeed, it is only in recent years that international scientific literature has begun to describe comparable models under the term Student-Led Physiotherapy Clinic, recognising their educational and clinical value. Many of the features that now define these experiences have been part of the University of Trieste’s Palestra Didattica since 1976: real patients, students actively involved in patient care, continuous supervision by experienced professionals, progressively increasing autonomy, collaborative learning and the integration of care, education and research.

Professor Paolo Fornasiero, Full Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Trieste and Vice Rector for Research, has been appointed Fellow of the Italian Academy of Engineering and Technology (ITATEC) in recognition of his outstanding scientific achievements and his contributions to research in materials chemistry, catalysis and sustainable technologies.

Established in 2022 on the initiative and with the support of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, ITATEC brings together leading experts in engineering, technology and applied sciences to promote scientific and technological excellence and strengthen the links between research, innovation and society.

The Academy fosters the exchange of knowledge among universities, research organisations and industry, develops evidence-based recommendations on strategic technological issues, provides independent scientific advice to public institutions and private stakeholders, and promotes the international visibility of Italian engineering and technological research.

At the European level, ITATEC serves as the Italian reference academy within the European Council of Academies of Applied Sciences, Technologies and Engineering (Euro-CASE), the network of national academies from 23 European countries that provides independent scientific and technological advice to European institutions and other international bodies.

Professor Fornasiero's appointment represents an important recognition of both his scientific leadership and the excellence of research carried out at the University of Trieste, reaffirming the University's commitment to advancing scientific knowledge, technological innovation and knowledge transfer at the national and international levels.

The University of Trieste Graduation Day returned to the heart of the city to celebrate research, knowledge and new generations.

On Thursday 16 July, Piazza Verdi hosted the proclamation ceremony for the PhD graduates of the 38th cycle, which concluded with the distinctive and traditional mortarboard toss. Included in the Trieste Estate programme, the event transformed one of the most significant rituals of academic life into a public occasion for bringing the University and the city community together.

Following its debut last year, Graduation Day in the city has confirmed itself as an event through which UniTS shares with the local community the value of doctoral education and the contribution of research to the cultural, scientific, social and economic development of society.

Rector Donata Vianelli’s first Graduation Day

For Rector Donata Vianelli, this was the first Graduation Day since taking office.

“This year’s ceremony was the first I experienced as Rector of the University of Trieste and represented the consolidation of a new tradition for the University and the city. PhD graduates stand at the highest level of university education and mark the entry of new generations into the research community. Celebrating this milestone in Piazza Verdi means bringing knowledge beyond the places where it is produced and sharing it with society, because science is not only the advancement of knowledge: it is responsibility, confidence in the future and the ability to contribute to the common good.”

Graduation Day 2026 in numbers

The 2026 edition confirmed the growth of the University of Trieste’s PhD programmes. The 187 new PhD graduates proclaimed in Piazza Verdi represent a new record number for the University.

As Francesco Longo, UniTS professor and Rector’s Delegate for PhD Programmes, pointed out, “this figure is also linked to the impact of scholarships funded by the PNRR, Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan: the 38th cycle is in fact the first to reach proclamation after fully including the scholarships launched in the 2022/2023 academic year, alongside the University of Trieste’s decision to continue investing its own resources in doctoral education.”

The 2026 class of new PhD graduates is made up of 89 women, accounting for 47.6%, and 98 men, accounting for 52.4%. The international component represents 14.4% of the total, with PhD graduates from 14 countries: Austria, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Ethiopia, the Philippines, France, India, Iran, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Rwanda and Tunisia. Overall, including Italy, 15 nationalities are represented, confirming a doctoral community open to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.

The 13 programmes: cross-disciplinary research

The 187 new PhD graduates come from 13 PhD programmes, reflecting the cross-disciplinary nature of research developed at the University of Trieste: from life sciences to physics, from chemistry to engineering, from artificial intelligence to nanotechnology, from sustainability to cognitive sciences, as well as history, architecture and territorial studies.

The programmes involved are: Environment and Life; Applied Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Molecular Biomedicine; Chemistry; Circular Economy; Physics; Civil-Environmental Engineering and Architecture; Industrial and Information Engineering; Nanotechnology; Neuroscience and Cognitive Science; Reproduction and Developmental Sciences; Earth Science and Fluid Mechanics; History of Societies, Institutions and Thought. From the Middle Ages to the Contemporary Age.

Guests, institutions and partners

The special guest of the evening was Alberto Di Minin, Professor of Innovation Management at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, researcher and science communicator, who delivered the keynote lecture “The Future Needs Teachers and Mentors. Reflections on Research, Open Innovation and Human Responsibility”.

His lecture focused on the role of research in major technological and social transformations. Every age has imagined the future through the science and technology of its time, but revolutions are never produced by technologies alone. They require people capable of turning knowledge into possibility, building bridges between research, business and society, and giving innovation a human meaning.

Alongside science, music also played a central role in the evening, thanks to the performance by Pierpaolo Foti, violinist and composer.

The ceremony, hosted by journalist Marinella Chirico, was attended by Rector of the University of Trieste Donata Vianelli, Rector’s Delegate for PhD Programmes Francesco Longo, President of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia Massimiliano Fedriga and Mayor of Trieste Roberto Dipiazza. Alberta Gervasio, Chief Executive Officer of Bluenergy Group S.P.A., and Luca Cristoforetti, General Manager of CiviBank, also took part on behalf of the partners supporting the initiative.

The mortarboard toss

The evening culminated in the proclamation of the new PhD graduates through the ritual of the mortarboard toss. The gesture, one of the most recognisable images of graduation ceremonies, is commonly traced back to the U.S. Naval Academy: in 1912, new officers threw their old cadet caps into the air. Since then, the mortarboard toss has become an immediate symbol of transition and collective celebration.

The event was also made possible thanks to the support of CiviBank and Bluenergy Group S.P.A., local partners of the initiative.

Trieste Estate is organised and promoted by the Municipality of Trieste, with the support of PromoTurismoFVG and in collaboration with the Trieste Convention & Visitors Bureau.