Thank you, thank you very much and good morning everyone. I greet the Magnificent Rector, the teaching staff, the technical-administrative staff, the students. Chiara, thanks for what you said.
I bring the greetings of Minister Anna Maria Bernini who is very sorry that she cannot be with us today. Greetings Sami Modiano, thank you, I'll tell you in advance for what he will say and for this new "transfusion of memory", allow me to use the words of Elie Wiesel. We need it, we need it today more than ever, we need it at any time.
Chiara, allow me to address you, you could be my daughter. You deeply moved me with what you said and how you described what university is. I won't repeat what you have already said because I identify with your words. Since I was a student, and you're right, you never stop being one, I identify with the sense that you gave to the university as a home, a community. In 1993, when the Bio-Medico Campus was born, I was an Erasmus student. I participated in the “Erasmus Tempus” program, the program which for the first time saw the participation of students from Eastern European countries who would later enter the European Union. That was the opportunity for me to get to know the world of the international student community. An extraordinary experience, to which I owe a lot. For this reason I give even greater value to what universities manage to do to welcome students, of any nationality, of any faith, of any social background, creating real communities.
I think that the Campus, like and more than the others, manages to do and is able to be home to a community of students, professors, researchers, a community that wants and must be increasingly international.
And what can the Ministry do to strengthen this sense of community, to make our academic world increasingly international? With Minister Bernini and the Government we have focused on a series of priorities, I will highlight five of them here. They are not the only ones, but they are the most important and the ones that best fit the message we want to give today.
First of all, we must ensure that the number of people attending universities in our country, of kids, of young people, who graduate, is always greater. Unfortunately, Italy does not excel in this, in the sense that we record in the international rankings positions that are not always encouraging in terms of the number of graduates. The example of the Campus that aims to have four thousand students enrolled in 2027 must be followed. Many universities are implementing various actions, we as a Ministry also thanks to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan have launched a series of projects: from orientation to the right to study. So scholarships, no tax area, residential housing to ensure that all students can actually pursue their talent and complete a course of study that will then lead them to graduation. And this is important, not only because our country, like all advanced and non-advanced countries, needs skills, needs people who know how to do all jobs, new jobs, but because knowledge, competence, culture, the preparation of people are an important safeguard of democracy and peace. And so the more the number of people who study, who study throughout their lives, who want to learn, increases, the more the sense of our democracy is strengthened.
International openness, together with the increase in the number of young people enrolling in university, is fundamental, as Minister Schillaci has already said, this means attracting students from all countries, from countries that most need access to these institutions, more advanced countries. University must be a moment of welcome, of inclusion, of getting to know each other, our differences but also our affinities.
With Minister Bernini we have done many international missions in one year, we have been almost everywhere in the world and we will continue in the coming months and years precisely because we are deeply convinced that the Italian university and research system must increasingly position themselves, with ever greater value, in an international network. To welcome students we must have the structures, the infrastructure, and also the tools to support those who are unable to access studies for economic reasons. We do this and we will do it more and more.
We must ensure that the teaching community is an increasingly international community. I see direct calls from professors from abroad passing before my eyes, they are increasingly numerous and this makes me proud, it makes us proud because I think they represent how the Italian university system is increasingly attractive, and it is. Maria Leptin, the President of the European Research Council, told this on the day celebrating the centenary of the National Research Council - I greet President Carrozza who is present here. Professor Leptin cited data that showed how Italy is actually attractive for all international researchers, from the youngest to those with the most senior research experience. Of course we must be even more so, we have already put in place a series of measures ranging from economic-financial support to maintaining the rule on the attraction of applicable brains from researchers and university professors, it was a battle of Minister Bernini, and always the more we must do it because the more the community of international teachers grows, the more attractive our universities will be. Furthermore, the university, research and scientific cooperation must always be open to the world, whatever the international tensions, the university community and the research community must create and maintain bonds that would otherwise be lost forever.
During the Rector's report I reflected on how the Campus has been able to integrate the need for synergies between different types of knowledge. Thirty years ago the Faculty of Medicine was born, twenty years ago Biomedical Engineering, an extraordinary example of the first integrations of knowledge, the application of robots to medicine, intuitions that many other universities have followed that have been very important to show how today we would not be able to cure if we did not apply technologies. To apply technologies we need someone who is not only a doctor but also an engineer, who therefore has those skills. In this direction we will soon definitively approve the reform of the degree classes, which is now in Parliament for the committees to express their opinions, and which aims to make the study path more flexible, to ensure that in all faculties, therefore in all degree courses, there is an integration of knowledge, a greater transversality that increases the possibility for our young people to acquire ever greater skills.
Likewise, it is important that our children are able to carry out extracurricular activities. In this sense, what you do and what you told us today is very beautiful. They are very important activities because a boy grows not only by studying, but also by dealing with the world outside the university; he grows by giving value to external appropriations. The projects in Peru, in Madagascar, impressed me greatly, just as I was greatly struck by the words of the foreign students who attend this university, and there are many of them throughout the Italian university system, who appreciate our country, not only for our culture, for our history, but also our openness and capacity for inclusion which reach their highest points precisely in these moments.
With Andrea Rossi, General Director and CEO, we have also often discussed some aspects that concern not only the integration of knowledge but an ever greater integration between the world of state and non-state universities. I personally graduated from a non-state university and therefore I appreciate what these universities do and are able to do for the benefit of our academic system, in general of the country. And thanks to the contribution that Andrea in his role as President and representative of non-state universities, he has given us success and intervened to try to strengthen not only the financial endowment of non-state universities but also to eliminate those regulatory aspects that sometimes determine discrimination, probably unintended, but which nevertheless exist and which sometimes unjustifiably disadvantage the world of non-state universities. Minister Bernini is absolutely in favor of any type of action that in the future will increasingly lead to not only formal but also substantial equalization. Therefore Andrea, I tell you here, we will increasingly need to deal with you as a representative of this important world to ensure that this contributes more and more to the cultural, scientific and technological strengthening of our country.
And speaking of integration, I am starting to conclude to take time away from the speech that we are all eagerly awaiting from Sami Modiano. Integration must be not only between non-state and state universities but must be between universities, the world of research and the world of business. The Rector greeted the representatives of the companies present today at this inauguration, companies that are fortunately increasingly present at all the inaugurations of the entire Italian university system. If we did not have this strong integration we would not be able to make people perceive the value of research because the value of research is perceived when research, science is transformed into innovation, transformed into products and services that people can appreciate. So if we want there to be an ever greater push to invest in universities and research we must be able to make people understand how important this is for their well-being, for their daily lives. For this reason, together with Minister Bernini, we have aimed very strongly at strengthening all initiatives aimed at technological transfer, be they strengthening the research infrastructures that companies can access to carry out their activities, or innovative doctorates which have the objective not only to raise the level of training of people within companies, but above all to strengthen collaborations between universities and companies precisely to ensure that research is transformed into innovation. So the example that you give through initiatives of venture with the business world, aimed precisely at technological transfer, or joint initiatives aimed at creating new start-ups, new entrepreneurial activities, is a very important example.
The President of ANVUR Uricchio knows well how much we have valued technological transfer in the context of the third mission and research infrastructures in the guidelines on the evaluation of research quality for precisely these reasons.
I don't want to dwell further. What I want to say is that for us today is a very important day, celebrating the thirtieth year of the Bio-Medico Campus means celebrating a university that looks to the future, to the world, a university that has important values that today are recognized in awarding of the degree Honorary to Sami Modiano.
I thank you even more for having invited us, I bring you again the greetings of Minister Bernini and I hope to be by your side - as I have done so far - in the next thirty and, who knows, even more. If you with your science will contribute to extending our lives we will be here forever! Thank you.
