Pisa welcomes the DHIP project study visit

Tuesday 08 October 2019

In the last week of September, the DHIP Project got to the heart with its study visit. Nineteen representatives from nine universities of Paraguay, Argentina and Colombia and the University of Sassari came to Pisa from 23 to 28 September. The public engagement has been the common thread under the agenda of the week in Pisa as well as the main topic of the workshop that took place in the Sapienza Building on Friday 27, chaired by the Rector Prof. Paolo Maria Mancarella. Among the panellists Monica Barni - Vice-President of the Regional Council of Tuscany and Councillor for Culture, University and Research - , the Vice-Rector of the University of Sassari (also a partner of the DHIP Project) Silvia Serreli and a diplomatic delegation composed of Sonia Biederman, attaché of the Embassy of Paraguay, and Sol Carolina Parra from the Embassy of Argentina. Prof. Francesco Marcelloni (Vice-Rector also attended the workshop for international cooperation and relations) and Prof. Marco Gesi (Vice-Rector for relations with local authorities). During a meeting in the CiRAA (Centro di Ricerche Agro-Ambientali "Enrico Avanzi"), Director Marcello Mele informed about the ongoing international projects on sustainable systems in agriculture. The day after the guests went to the GATE (Galileo Aggregator for Technology & Enterprises) an aggregator of innovative enterprises developing digital technologies. GATE was born from the collaboration between ER Erre Quadro (Spin-off of University of Pisa) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. A visit to the University Museum System facilities, through the passionate guidance of Professor Flora Silvano (Egyptological Collections) and of Professor Gianfranco Natale (Museum of Human Anatomy), allowed our guest discovering the progress of knowledge in the long history of the University of Pisa. On the same day, professors and administrators from the partner universities could admire the vast heritage of the Natural History Museum of Calci and the magnificent Certosa. In addition to the technical meetings between the project partners and consistently with the thematic focus of the week, the agenda included two meetings with the Technology Transfer Services and the European and International Research Section, two of the University of Pisa Units. At the conclusion of the week, the guest attended the evening event “La Sapienza Night Experience” together with the Rector, who warmly greeted them, mentioning the relevance of the DHIP Project. An occasion that surely left in our guests an excellent souvenir of Pisa and its "widespread" university. Finally, a magnificent and concrete example of internationalization: a visit to the interferometric gravitational-wave detector Virgo resulting from the collaboration between physicists and engineers belonging to 20 different research groups from six European countries.