Is the food we eat really healthy? What will it be like to live with robots? How can artificial intelligence help us in our everyday lives? Over 1200 young people they found answers to these questions today, September 26, atUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma participating in the European Researchers' Night 2025 – LEAF ("heaL thE plAnet's Future") together with the local citizens in a night all about science.
During the evening, from 17pm to 22pm, the future scientists learned about the characteristics of the foods we eat putting to the test innovative high-precision sensors, have seen the in action collaborative robots, revealed with practical experiences the deceptions of the mind and experimented with researchers UCBM laboratory techniques and simulations in the medical and engineering fields.
UCBM, a partner of for years Frascati Science, Celebrates twentieth anniversary of the "European Researchers' Night" and opened its doors to students and families eager to discover the fascinating world of STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – from the inside.
STEM: Italy faces a serious shortage of graduates
The opening to the territory of theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma responds to the need for disseminate STEM topics in Italy, raising awareness about the severe shortage of graduates in STEM subjects and especially women. In our country, in fact, only 21% of university students obtain a three-year degree in a scientific-technological field (source: OECD Report "Education at a Glance 2025",) given that it drops to 16,8% if we consider only women (source Istat 2024).
On the contrary in UCBM Female students now represent the majority of enrolled students with a good 61,4% since consolidates a steady growth trend in the fields of engineering, life sciences and food technology, and medical and healthcare disciplines. Their results are also noteworthy: in 2023, 63,8% of graduates were women and in three-year and single-cycle degree courses, female students graduate on time at a higher or equal percentage than male students.
In Italy, according to the Almalaurea Report 2024, the employment rate for STEM graduates five years after the master's degree reaches one of the highest averages ever: the 88,3% and in the next four years (2025-2029) companies will struggle to find professionals in these subjects, needing approximately 250 thousand graduates or with an ITS Academy qualification (source: Excelsior 2025 – Unioncamere and Ministry of Labor). For STEM degrees only there would be a shortage of approximately 9 to 18 graduates per year compared to the needs of businesses, in addition to the obvious lack of other useful profiles such as, for example, graduates in statistics.
Experiences and workshops
The planned activities aimed to stimulate young people's curiosity about science and to help them understand how research can improve the quality of life and promote the sustainability of the planet. Among the numerous activities in UCBM it was possible:
- pitting people's senses against a high-precision sensor with the "Mineral Water Sommelier" competition discovering the differences between human taste and the capabilities of sensors;
- see the collaborative robots used by theUnit UCBM of Advanced Robotics and Human-Centered Technologies in realistic scenarios to understand how they will help us in everyday life;
- to practically use artificial intelligence models, as in the case of "XGEM" developed by Faculty of Engineering UCBM, to generate health-related data such as radiological images and reports.
- discover thanks to the artificial intelligence including analyze urban traffic flows starting from GPS data produced by vehicles on the road.
In these and other experiences the researchers UCBM They helped young people experiment with the most advanced research techniques with simulations in the engineering and medical fields, from the distillation process to the preparation and analysis of histological samples.
The numbers of the Research of UCBM
With his 3 Departmental Faculties, 16 Degree Courses, 30 Specialization Schools has always been Academy with a catalog of over 100 courses and masters, UCBM It is a cutting-edge teaching and research centre in the fields of medicine and health professions, biomedical engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, and nutrition and sustainability issues.
More than 500 researchers divided in 50 research units they work every year on over 100 projects funded by national and international institutions, organizations, and companies. Over the years UCBM He developed 40 patents with 7 active spin-offs. Today scientific research of UCBM takes place inside a modern 50 square meter university campus on a dedicated laboratory area of 3.000 square meters.
