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Among the results it is worth mentioning not so much a specific patent – as much as we have obtained some patents of potential drugs that will go into experimentation and which we believe could be revolutionary – as much as high impact results. In one of our projects funded by the Valle d’Aosta Region, we started the first targeted and personalized therapy for a patient with cancer using a sophisticated computational screening of genetic material. In short, precision medicine is within reach and many more patients will benefit in the coming years.
Very often, the results achieved in industrial sponsored research, 15 percent of the IIT budget, are not even patented but simply incorporated into the products of the companies. In other cases, our technology transfer mission is expressed in the creation of companies (startup). In 2022 there are already five.
Should you indicate the biggest bet currently in the pipeline at the IIT, by “bet” I mean the most promising and rapidly implemented research front, which one would you mention?
Two words are enough: ‘Ai first ‘. In the next Strategic Plan, which will see the light on January 1, 2024, I would like to make any IIT activity experimental a data source, probably “big”, suitably prepared and stored to allow the application of artificial intelligence algorithms, understood in its broadest sense. I am thinking of laboratories where automation makes us faster, where AI helps us to select among the many possibilities of data interpretation, in which the scientist uses algorithms in a transversal way to be more efficient in his research. The experiment will always be the ultimate proof of the correctness of the hypotheses, but the speed will change thanks to the computation. We will do a lot in silico before moving into the physical world. I imagine a science where we no longer think of any barrier, be it between disciplines rather than the distinction between theory and applications.
How have the geopolitical, raw materials and energy crises changed research priorities?
Our Strategic Plan includes among the great challenges to which we would like to give an answer that of sustainability and that of health, issues strictly related to the general health of our ecosystem and the particular health of citizens. The epidemiological results of cancer, the spread of communicable diseases, mental diseases and, in general, the quality of life show a direct link with pollutants, the state of the environment and cities, climate change. Our program therefore sees lines of research working on the development of biodegradable materials on the one hand and robotics for precision agriculture on the other hand, we have scientists working on CO capture2, as well as those who develop new materials for the construction of photovoltaic systems. These are just some of the examples from an overall program he sees at work 82 thematic groups with about 1,600 people in total directly dedicated to research. I believe that increasingly, the duty of scientists, at least throughout this century, will be to ensure that science and the technologies derived from it address the problem of climate change, while keeping us healthy. A happy degrowth does not exist, the science-based transition does. An appeal to decision makers, of whatever nationality they are: we must act quickly because the current model will lead to dire consequences very quickly.
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