Scientific education and training: for over 10 years at the centre of the activities of IBSA Foundation for scientific research

Combining scientific and humanistic knowledge, supporting young researchers, relating scientific research in an accessible and engaging way, expanding its dissemination among an ever wider audience: these are just some of the goals of IBSA Foundation for scientific research, which in over ten years of activity has become the “driver” of the IBSA Group’s social responsibility activities.

From 2012 to date, the Foundation has promoted several projects, focusing on the education and training of the younger generations and the support for study and the development of a medical-scientific career. For this purpose, Fellowship and Scholarship programmes were established which award grants and scholarships in favour of students and young researchers.

“Investing in the talent, skills and training of the new generations means looking at the growth of all of us as a community, and promoting scientific, social and economic progress. It’s an investment in the future and in the collective well-being, especially if we talk about supporting culture and scientific research, as the pandemic experience has also taught us”, commented Arturo Licenziati, President and CEO of the IBSA Group.

“Among our objectives is also that of training a new generation of doctors, capable of looking at the health and well-being of the person in a broader and more comprehensive way, and to open up to a concept of “care” that goes far beyond therapy”, added Silvia Misiti, Director of IBSA Foundation. “For this reason, we decided to support, at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences of the Università della Svizzera Italiana, some courses which cover synergistically both a scientific and humanistic knowledge, while integrating into the students’ training also notions deriving from other cultural fields, such as music and other arts”.

THE SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMME AT USI

IBSA Foundation’s commitment to promoting medical-scientific studies reached an important milestone in 2017, when the collaboration with the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) was started. A partnership of great value, born with a long-term goal: to provide financial support for annual scholarships for a total of over CHF 2 million over ten years for USI students registered to the Bachelor of Medicine or to the Master of the Faculty of biomedical science.

Through this collaboration, IBSA Foundation promoted over the years the medical-scientific academic study and contributed to the development of the Faculty of Medicine at USI, the only one in Canton Ticino. Suffice it to say that the first 5 contributions awarded in 2017 increased to as many as 118 in 2022, for a total of 361 scholarships.

THE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME

Educational support also goes through the annual Fellowships programme that IBSA Foundation dedicates to researchers under the age of 40 from universities around the world. The Foundation makes available several scholarships, each worth € 30,000, intended to support research projects in often underfunded therapeutic areas, such as dermatology, endocrinology, reproductive medicine and urology, pain medicine, orthopaedics and rheumatology. Furthermore, every year one of these scholarships is dedicated to a “special” focus: a first-line and topical theme such as Regenerative Medicine (Special Edition 2021) and Healthy Aging (Special Edition 2022). Since 2013 – the year of the first edition of the project – IBSA Foundation awarded 40 grants, for a total funding of over € 1 million, for 938 projects from 40 countries. The 2022 call is still open, and projects can be submitted by January 31, 2023, via the dedicated platform.