The Rector of Sant'Anna School and the Director of the Scuola Normale chair the Governing Board of the EELISA Alliance, which brings together 10 European universities: the handover from Monday 18 to Wednesday 20 November

The Rector of the Sant'Anna School Sabina Nuti and the Director of the Scuola Normale Superiore Luigi Ambrosio will assume for six months the chairmanship of the Governing Board of EELISA (European Engineering Learning Innovation and Science Alliance), the Alliance that joins 10 European university institutions from eight countries (in addition to Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Romania, Turkey, Hungary). Germany's Joachim Hornegger, current chairman of EELISA's Governing Board and president of the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, will hand over the baton to Rector Sabina Nuti and Director Luigi Ambrosio, who lead the only two Italian universities that are part of this Alliance, which brings together more than 194,000 students, 18,500 lecturers and 12,000 technical-administrative staff.

The investiture will take place during a Grand Meeting scheduled to be held in Pisa from Monday 18 to Wednesday 20 November at the Sant'Anna School and the Scuola Normale Superiore and involving the different governing bodies, operational teams and representatives of the student component of the member institutes of the European Alliance for Engineering, Innovation and Science (EELISA), which, at the end of October 2024, will be four years old and has already received various European funding for specific projects presented by the Alliance. 

‘It is a great responsibility,’ commented Sabina Nuti and Luigi Ambrosio, ‘this six-month presidency of the EELISA governing board because we are entering a crucial phase of the Alliance. In our fifth year, we will have to manage, together with the other institutions of the Alliance, the transition from an initiative based on shared projects to a fully integrated long-term collaboration that aims to promote a new model of the European engineer, scientist, humanist, ready to contribute to global challenges, with intelligent and sustainable solutions and the awarding of appropriate certificates to students who are part of our network'.

Last year, the EELISA Alliance obtained funding of €14.4 million for the four-year period 2023-2027, of which €1 million went to the Scuola Normale Superiore and €1 million to the Sant'Anna School. Mobility grants, operational meetings for the development of activities, events and workshops financed within the framework of the EELISA Joint Calls for Communities, agreements for the mobility of lprofessors, researchers, students, and specific programme areas of shared intentions are all in place. But the bar is being raised, with further steps already planned at the Pisa meeting: defining a legal entity within the Alliance capable of assisting long-term sustainability; signing a document on which to converge with actions capable of attracting and cultivating talent within the Alliance.

The Grand Meeting opening ceremony, scheduled to take place in the Aula Magna of the Sant'Anna School on Monday 18 November starting at 2.00 p.m., will be attended with greetings by Rector Sabina Nuti and Director Luigi Ambrosio, the members of the EELISA Governing Board, EELISA President Dale Martin. Full Professor Arianna Menciassi, Vice -Rector of the Sant'Anna School, and Professor Fosca Giannotti of the Scuola Normale Superiore will give two keynote speeches on research and artificial intelligence. Guest speaker Robert-Jan Smits, Chairman of the Executive Board of the University of Eindhoven Technology and President of the Eurotech Universities Alliance.