The first three UCBM students graduated with international thesis courses
Inspired by National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the Grand Challenges Scholar Program (GCSP) is aimed at bachelor's and master's degree students who wish to tackle an international thesis path on topics related to one of the fourteen major engineering challenges of the st century, identified by the NAE as priorities for improving life on the planet.
Health, safety, sustainability and joie de vivre are the macro themes on which the students have been encouraged to reflect in order to elaborate their thesis project, a work with a strong multidisciplinary character that combines cutting-edge research with the need to find acceptable and feasible solutions, also from an economic point of view, to be returned to the company.
Alice Carbone, graduated through the GCSP in Industrial Engineering, focused his thesis on the methods used in low- and middle-income countries to carry out early diagnosis of childhood neurodevelopmental deficits linked to malnutrition conditions. The ultimate aim was to lay the foundations for the development of a simple, economical and at the same time effective diagnostic technology aimed at the pediatric population of countries where screening is scarcely accessible.
Evaluating the technical and market feasibility of an application in the sports field of the STEP project (Sensorised insoles for therapeutic monitoring of patients) of the star-up Medere, was the objective of the thesis of Caroline Haboba, who holds a bachelor's degree Industrial Engineering with the GCSP. These are special insoles in which sensors are inserted for diagnostics and therapeutic monitoring of patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases used instead successfully to classify the technical gestures of the game of padel.
The Faculty of Science and Technology for Man and the Environment also participates in the programme. Amedeo Toraldo he completed his studies in Food and Human Nutrition Sciences with a thesis project that wants to propose a planning, in its guidelines for development, on the use of some perennial and woody plant species, such as the olive tree and the vine, in strategies to contain carbon dioxide emissions at the domestic level, citizen and industrialist.
"In this delicate and difficult moment - says Prof. Giorgio Pennazza, Vice Dean of the Departmental Faculty of Engineering who presided over the graduation session – Every student who graduates makes his contribution to all moving forward. A small but extraordinary thing, which gives even more hope because it is done with an eye open to the world and to the challenges we are all facing".
