The Gran Sasso Science Institute completes a path lasted four years. Following the publication on Gazzetta Ufficiale of the ministerial order which sets forth its establishment, GSSI becomes a school for advanced studies. As a welcome sign for the newly born university, today the Minister for Education Stefania Giannini visited GSSI and took part to the meeting “A knowledge city”.
“The Government strongly believes in this PhD school, coherently with the vision of investing on research as an element of the new productive identity of the country”, Minister Giannini comments. “The GSSI represents an excellence pole which enhances the level of internationalization of the national research system and which has already contributed to the progress of science with sensational discoveries such as that of gravitational waves”, the Minister concludes.
The meeting featured also the participation of INFN president Fernando Ferroni, the Dean of the University of L’Aquila Paola Inverardi, ANVUR president Andrea Graziosi, GSSI director Eugenio Coccia and young students and researchers working at the institute.
“It is a very remarkable result for L’Aquila and for its relaunch project as a knowledge city, a mission made possible by the presence in the same territory of INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories and of the University of L’Aquila” GSSI director Eugenio Coccia comments.
“An important day, the first of an Institute which is by now free of the tutoring of INFN“, comments INFN president Fernando Ferroni. “INFN is proud of the role it played in these complex though exciting three years, bringing to the birth and growth of this highly internationalized institution, which will continue to be scientifically bound to the INFN National Laboratories ”, Ferroni concludes.
It is the successful conclusion of a process started in 2012, when the birth of GSSI as a center for research and as an international PhD school was made possible by the drive of OECD, the effort of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), and the will of Regione Abruzzo and the national Government. In its first three years, the institute received almost 2000 applications for the four PhD courses - in physics, mathematics, computer science and urban studies. With its 120 PhD students, half of whom coming from abroad, GSSI is to date the most internationalized university in Italy.
During its initial three-year trial period, the institute’s activity was monitored by ANVUR - the National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research System, which, on 11 November 2015, gave its fully positive judgement. In the wake of this favorable evaluation, the Government and MIUR (the Ministry for Education, University and Research) started the establishment process of GSSI, which concluded today.
The Gran Sasso Science Institute in L’Aquila joins the other Italian excellence schools devoted to advanced studies and research, which are Scuola Normale and Scuola Sant’Anna in Pisa, IMT in Lucca, SISSA in Trieste and IUSS in Pavia.
