Italy’s recovery and resilience plan (NRPP): Ca' Foscari obtains funding for over 74 million euros to support challenging scientific projects on topics of global relevance such as: cultural heritage, sustainable tourism, welfare and ageing, cybersecurity, environmental and financial risks, and technological innovation. The total funding also includes EUR 10 million recently allocated by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR). They will be funnelled into infrastructures and equipment, in support of research activities. These resources add themselves to the university's regular multi-year budget, accounting for more than EUR 8 million.
In the words of Rector Tiziana Lippiello: 'Our university's research projects funded under the NRPP are of high quality and innovative. Our researchers will tackle the great global challenges of our time with their unique skills and state of the art methodologies. The funded projects are strongly interdisciplinary, and bring together several areas of research from our University. This very significant co-funding will help us make a further, significant contribution to the development of research at a decisive time for the recovery of Europe and of the world.
Ca' Foscari's main scientific projects funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan are:
- AGE-IT: a novel public-private alliance to generate socioeconomic, biomedical and technological solutions for an inclusive Italian ageing society. This project addresses the consequences and challenges posed by the ageing of the population in Italy. Ageing is a multifaceted and complex process that presents risks, but also opportunities to promote inclusive wellbeing with implications for society as a whole. The project involves public and private partners with an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to contribute to this field of research and support the development of relevant goods and services for the market. Contact person for Ca' Foscari: Agar Brugiavini, Department of Economics. Funding allocated to the University: € 5.6 million
- CHANGES: Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Next-Gen Sustainable Society: The project involves 36 associated parties. Its goal is to innovate the management and promotion of cultural heritage and to support a widespread and active participation and awareness at European level. The project exploits the potential of digital technologies for both tangible and intangible heritage. Contact person for Ca' Foscari: Monica Calcagno / Centro di Erogazione Servizi di Ateneo CESA. Funding allocated to the University: € 7.8 million.
- SERICS: Security and Rights in the CyberSpace. This project aims to create a “sprawled” research centre in the field of cyber security, distributed throughout the country and based on the hub & spoke model. There will be one central hub, and 10 thematic spokes, each promoted by a different cluster of universities and companies. Ca' Foscari will be in charge of software and platform security, investigating both the formal foundations of secure programming, and the security of the software supply chain. The Ca’ Foscari group will work towards secure 'by-design' software systems, and it will explore innovative solutions to protect the software management and development process, testing them to validate and experimentally evaluate any new proposal. Contact person for Ca' Foscari: Riccardo Focardi, Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics . Funding allocated to the University: € 6.9 million.
- GRINS: Growing Resilient, INclusive and Sustainable. The project aims at developing an integrated platform, made up of heterogeneous and georeferenced databases for the study of the evolution of the economic and social conditions of Italian territories and of the Italian economic system as a whole. The research will focus on: environmental aspects (i.e. evolution of climate conditions, mapping of natural hazards and of pollution-related data); social, economic and health aspects, (i.e. the analysis of information on mobility, consumption, health, and on the trend of economic activities); financial aspects such as medium and long-term sustainability risk profiles of the various stakeholders (State, households, enterprises) with reference to debt. Contact person for Ca' Foscari: Monica Billio, Department of Economics. Funding allocated to the University: € 4.1 million.
- Ecosystem iNEST: Interconnected North-East Innovation. This project aims at enhancing and rapidly extending the benefits of digital technologies to key sectors in the North-East of Italy (specifically to the Regions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Veneto, and to the Provinces of Trento and Bolzano). The research and innovation activities of iNEST focus on 9 themes. Focus areas area: the industrial-manufacturing sector for a green and digital turn, development of alpine areas, sustainable cities, architecture and design, health, food and new lifestyles, tourism, culture and creative industries, intelligent agri-food sector, marine, maritime and inland water basin of the Northern Adriatic, digital twin models and technologies. Links between local ecosystems at a macro-regional level will foster a shared 'digital vision' for the benefit of the economy and citizens. Local strategies of intelligent specialisation will come together in a shared approach for the entire North-Eastern region. Ca' Foscari will play a key role among Italian North-Eastern universities in enabling a tourism ecosystem based on the convergence of culture, creativity and digital technologies. Contact person for Ca' Foscari: Fabrizio Panozzo / Centro di Erogazione Servizi di Ateneo CESA. Funding allocated to the University: € 7.1 million.
- ITINERIS: Italian Integrated Environmental Research Infrastructures System, is an integrated system of National Research Infrastructures working on the environment. It aims to becoming the benchmark in its field at European level. To ensure this integrated approach, ITINERIS is building a network of 22 important Research Infrastructures working around the environment, and carrying on studies on the atmosphere, marine environment, terrestrial biosphere, and the geosphere. ITINERIS sustainably develops interdisciplinary research through the use and re-use of existing or pre-operational data and services, helping Italy face present and upcoming environmental challenges. Contact person for Ca' Foscari: Marco Roman, Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics. Funding allocated to the University: € 1.9 million
- FF-ITI - FUTURE FARMING Innovation Technology Infrastructure. Ca' Foscari is both proponent and implementer of this project, which aims to create an innovative technological infrastructure capable of supporting industrial research and technology transfer from agriculture in a 'controlled environment' (based on technology and data) to nature co-design. Where these two realms intersect, they create a new field that touches upon life sciences, chemistry, engineering, computer science and design to identify industrial applications where nature is a production platform. Future Farming focuses on the cross-sectoral impact of life forms, from the microscopic to the macroscopic level: viruses, bacteria, algae, fungi, plants, insects… cultivating them sustainably in controlled environments so that they become food, biomolecules, biopharmaceuticals, biomaterials, etc. Contact persons for Ca' Foscari: Carlo Bagnoli and Alvise Perosa, Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanotechnologies. Funding allocated to the University: € 20 million (NRPP + private funding)
The total funding includes additional research projects, such as the 17 winning projects from the Young Researchers call for proposals that received overall funding for EUR 2.9 million. Ca' Foscari also obtained EUR 5.7 million from NRPP funds for PhD fellowships.
