MILAN (ITALPRESS) – ‘Dear alumni, dear professors and dear employees of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, The Academic Year begins and one has to work, one has to study. But it is very beautiful the educational pathway’. Thus opens the video message that Pope Francis addressed to the students, students and teaching and administrative staff of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, on the occasion of the Inauguration Ceremony of the Academic Year 2024-2025. In particular, His Holiness addressed the student community saying that ‘one must study with the mind, one must feel with the heart, and one must do with the hands’.The ceremony was attended by the President of the Senate of the Italian Republic, Ignazio La Russa, the Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci, the Minister of University and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, and the Minister for Public Administration, Paolo Zangrillo. Institutional greetings from the University and the San Donato Group were delivered by the University President, Paolo Rotelli, and San Donato Group Vice President, Kamel Ghribi, while the Magnifico Rector of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Enrico Gherlone, officially declared the Academic Year 2024-2025 open.The new Academic Year is, for UniSR, the year of consolidation of research quality, as confirmed by national and international rankings. The university has climbed more than 200 positions in the QS World University Rankings 2025, placing 389th, on a global scale (in 2024, it was 595th). With this extraordinary ‘climb’, it is the university that, among the top 500 ranked, globally, has made the greatest leap forward in the rankings.But this is not the only supremacy: Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, in fact, is the first, among the 42 Italian universities ranked, for the number of Citations per Faculty (Citations per Faculty), where it totals the highest score recorded by Italian universities in the ranking, with a score(1-100, where 100 is the value corresponding to the best performing university, in that parameter, at the world level) of 88.5.UniSR’s research record is also confirmed by THE World University Ranking, which places the university fourth among Italian universities and in the 201-250 range out of 2,092 worldwide. UniSR’s areas of excellence are the quality of Research – where the university ranks 6th in the world and 3rd in the medicine and dentistry cluster -, the ratioStudents/Faculty and the number of Citations per Faculty.The 2,625 total publications in 2023 and the 20.158 Impact Factor points validate this leadership, which is supported by the rich medal table of awards obtained: suffice it to mention the 31 ERC-LS projects (2007-2024), the 93 Horizon 2020 (2013-2020), the 33 Horizon Europe (2021- 2024) and the 90 active projects with the MUR.And it is precisely with an eye on the future of research that UniSR, together with IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, has entered into strategic partnerships of enormous scope for the development of three strategic areas. First, Artificial intelligence, which kicked off the agreement with Microsoft, in order to develop a digital Al platform applied to clinical practice, for faster and more precise diagnosis of diseases and personalization of treatments.Another crucial project is NeuroTech, implemented through two important collaborations. The first, all-Italian, with the Biorobotics Institute of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, to develop an advanced research program to treat some diseases of the central nervous system (CNS) with neuromodulation methods. The second, international in scope, with the Nicolelis Institute for Advanced Brain Studies, of the Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont Association for Research Support (AASDAP), for the creation of the new San Raffaele Neurotech Hub. The result of two years of work, the center will be the first initiative of its kind in Europe, founded on the use of a new and generic noninvasive brain-machine interface (nBMI) approach, which will be the basis for multiple neurorehabilitation protocols and therapies aimed at patients with neurological diseases. The third strategic area is called Aging and involves the Faculty of Medicine, several laboratories of the IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, the Faculty of Philosophy and national partners to address the multidisciplinary challenges of an aging society.Many novelties were announced during the Ceremony: in the new Academic Year,Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele makes strategic choices capable of responding to the needs of a rapidly changing context and meeting the challenges of a complex historical moment full of opportunities.First of all, the introduction of an absolute novelty in the Italian panorama, an entirely new organization of the Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery, with three vocational pathways: one addressed mainly to medicine, one to medical-surgical subjects and one to translational research. The three pathways will be accessible to students, based on merit-based criteria, after a common first two-year period. The new organization will allow future doctors to follow their aspirations, enhancing their aptitudes and somewhat anticipating, though not constraining, their specialist training through some characterizing subjects.UniSR also enriches its educational offerings. This A.A. saw the start of the new Master’s Degree Course in Health Informatics, a joint degree with the Milan Polytechnic, configured as a transversal and multidisciplinary course that combines elements of statistics, computer science and engineering with the notions proper to the health disciplines, for the creation of professionals specialized in the IT management of the information flows that are produced in health care and clinical research activities. The applications are wide-ranging: in addition to improving patient management and optimizing that of data, notions of Health Informatics are also used to develop new medical technologies and design public health strategies.Still on the educational offerings side, another new feature announced is the new Master’s Degree Course in Geopolitics, Economics and Global Strategies, jointly titled with the University of Bergamo. The CdL aims at analyzing the complex geopolitical, economic and social dynamics that characterize contemporary society, developing advanced and multidisciplinary training in the field of political and economic sciences, and guarantees curricular internships at national and international institutions, private companies, research organizations, public administrations and consulting firms operating in Italy or abroad.UniSR also guarantees excellence in postgraduate training, with its PhDs and its 33 Schools of Specialization. And it was precisely in the national competition for medical specialty schools that UniSR achieved another noteworthy success: as many as 10 candidates from the university, out of 14,021 in total, placed among the top 100, and 19.8 percent of the places put up for bid in 2024 were acquired, again by candidates from Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, among the top 1,000 in the ranking.In order to make the most of the opportunities offered by technological innovation in education, UniSR is also enhancing the infrastructure of its Advanced Simulation Center with an expansion of the Simulation Lab and the Cadaver Lab, in which students of the Faculty of Medicine and residents will be able to simulate rescue maneuvers, diagnostic examinations, checkups and nursing and surgical procedures.After the proclamation of the start of the new Academic Year, a ceremony was held to confer an Honorary Degree in Philosophy of the Contemporary World to the Honorable Antonio Tajani, inspired by his long experience in diplomacy and international relations. Hon. Tajani has a long career in European and Italian institutions, with relevant roles as President of the European Parliament and European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship. His knowledge of international dynamics and geopolitics is recognized by the Athenaeum as a significant contribution to understanding the contemporary world.’Innovating through knowledge is the motto Vita-Salute San Raffaele University has set for its present and near future. ‘Innovation through knowledge’ for us means considering teaching and research as the driving force behind change. Our commitment, in this twofold direction, is borne out by the university’s many firsts in the world’s most prestigious rankings and is corroborated by its continued growth. With a student community of 6,698, UniSR has more than doubled its undergraduate community, which numbered just over 3,000 in 2018 alone. And the projected figure for A.A. 2028/2029 is 8,250 male and female students. ‘The numbers even quadruple for the Faculty of Medicine (from 160 enrolled in the A.Y. 2018/ 2019 to 750 in the A.Y. 2024/ 2025), with extraordinary results also in the International Medical Doctor Program (from 80 to 150, in the same time frame),’ said Vita-Salute San Raffaele University Rector Enrico Gherlone.’Our strategy, which has proved successful, is to put the student is at the center, so much so as to make him an integral part of the system, so that he can follow his aspirations and cultivate his talent, an indispensable element in a profession, such as medicine, with a strong vocational imprinting. Hence, the new organization of the Course of Medicine and Surgery, with three pathways that will enable aspiring doctors to enhance their aptitudes right from their undergraduate careers. But also the development of projects that will enable training updated with the latest technologies and built around innovative and, in many ways, even pioneering research programs. ‘Innovating through knowledge’ means, finally, not being afraid of change, but aspiring to govern it through the training of trained and competent professionals. Hence, the new Master’s degrees in Health Informatics and in Geopolitics, Economics and Global Strategies. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that, with the Strategic Plan 2023-2026, linked to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UniSR has allocated a budget of 37 million euros: a number that tells better than any words our investment on young people and on the future of our countryè concluded the Rector.
– Photo: xh7/Italpress –
(ITALPRESS).
