What is your role in the Circle U. Alliance?
I have worked at the University of Pisa from September 2021 and I joined Circle U. in November 2022, as one of the new Rector's delegates. Since at UNIPI I'm in charge of the "Promotion of Entrepreneurial Culture and Innovation" and I'm the Chief of the Contamination Lab (A center for entrepreneurial education and co-creation), I've been asked to help in writing a part of the new proposal "Circle U. 2030". If funded (hopefully), there will be a new Work Package in charge of University of Pisa called "Strengthening Societal Engagement" that will be based on the great achievements of the previous WP4 "Student Led Sustainable Innovation" coordinated by University of Belgrade. It would be an exciting challenge supported by the experience of the whole consortium: some partners, like Aarhus University, have great practices to share.
What do you particularly like about your work at Circle U.?
The opportunity to give international horizons not only to the community of students and scholars, but also to regional stakeholders. The involvement of local actors is particularly time consuming, but I'm sure it can open new sights and perspectives on good practices and processes, scientific discoveries, as well as new markets (just to cite a few) that can support co-creation and innovation in every regional ecosystem.
What sight in your city would you show a visiting colleague?
I would like to stress a couple of statements about a real treasure: the Agro-environmental Research Center "Enrico Avanzi" (unipi.it) is the demo-farm of University of Pisa, embedded in the San Rossore National Nature Park (terredipisa.it). 1700 hectares of arable land and woodland, 15 km of hiking and biking trails in a wonderful natural scenery, on the Coast, 15 minutes far from the City Center. The extensive integration of agricultural activities, research, experimentation, and teaching enables the Center to develop new knowledge, due to the collaboration between different disciplines and public and private organizations in the surrounding area. At the various stops on your itinerary as a visitor, you will learn about some solutions provided by the Center to face some agricultural problems linked to sustainability challenges.
Have you had an Erasmus/exchange experience abroad, as a student or in your profession?
Unfortunately, as a student I didn't exploit the Erasmus opportunities I had. However, I've been lucky enough to recover this time: in fact, as a researcher I had the chance to take part and to coordinate some Erasmus+ projects such as The Wine Lab (thewinelab.eu) and "FoodBiz", whose aim was to implement actions where university students have active roles in their communities, bringing into the university the local and tacit knowledge of stakeholders and citizens and vice-versa, and co-creating with other international players, as peers, new knowledge and innovation through mobility activities. Furthermore, given the topics, you can easily understand that these projects have been particularly pleasant to satisfy students and teachers curiosity on gastronomy and wine.
Currently, I'm leading University of Pisa unit that is working on another Erasmus+ project called NEMOS (nemosproject.com) to set up a new educational model for acquisition of sustainability competences through service-learning: a great experience that allows our teachers to share and learn innovative teaching methods and, to the students involved, to learn in a dynamic and inspiring way.
If you had a sabbatical year, what would you do?
I would like to spend some time to explore how University-Business-Community collaboration happens in third countries (extra-EU) to bring back to my community new ideas, methods and tools.