Andrea Grignolio, Professor of History of Medicine, University of Rome “La Sapienza” and member of the Senate Office of Elena Cattaneo reflects on the successes of UniStem 2014.
UniStem 2014, Europe’s premier dissemination event on stem cell research for school students, keeps on growing year after year and on the 14th of March 2014, UniStem Day celebrated its sixth year. The first event, on the 27 March 2009, University of Milan, consisted of: a single university, many students and several valuable talks and workshops. In 2014, the event consisted of 36 Italian universities and 9 other universities from different European Countries including the UK, Spain and the new arrivals of Ireland and Sweden.
Of particular interest for the students was the talk (delivered via web-streaming to most of the participating universities) of Roberto Cingolani, director of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, who explained information- and nano-technology with beautiful images and examples. Giuseppe Remuzzi, an MD from the Institute Mario Negri of Bergamo, also involved the crowd by touching ethical themes connected to every medical intervention, from kidney transplantations to the death of Camillo Benso Count of Cavour, the Italian Republic’s founding father. A much appreciated session was given by José De Falco, Doctor of Constitutional Law who, together with myself, is a member of Elena Cattaneo’s office in the Italian Senate. He challenged the students explaining the unavoidable interconnections between Politics and Science. Each student has received an fantastic copy of the Italian Constitution that was signed in Rome on December 27th 1947.
