Innovation, collaboration and interdisciplinarity. Here is MUSA's vision for the coming years
The Third General Meeting of MUSA has come to an end, but many questions and issues remain unanswered, in particular how MUSA projects can embody a model of interoperability in which we work together for the future of science. For this reason, we turned to Giovanna Iannantuoni, President of MUSA and Rector of the University of Milan-Bicocca, to ask how we can break down the boundaries between universities, institutions, the world of research and business.
According to Iannantuoni, ‘the idea is what we have been able to see during this General Meeting. The projects presented are made by researchers and scientists with both a multidisciplinary and an ‘inter-university’ perspective, i.e. a perspective in which we all work together, including private individuals, who for us are fundamental for the development of the country and the future of science. Science must precisely be multidisciplinary and increasingly broadened, where we study topics such as urban regeneration, digitalisation, energy efficiency and smart cities, in a vision that allows us to focus on how to change the age-old disciplinary approach that we carry with us. This day represents an attempt to first change the way we think about science and the way we build scientific and cultural bridges to the future’.
Finally, we asked the president how she envisions MUSA in 10 years’ time. For Iannantuoni, this must be ‘a start-up that has now become solid and able to stand on its own two feet, certainly international, linked to universities but also to private entities, which has been able to understand how the replicability of certain actions, such as the squares in Bicocca that are currently being built, can be reproduced in other cities and other places around the world. Topics such as educational poverty or the traceability of luxury goods can have significant effects on the economic world’.
