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As reported by “moleventiquattro” newsroom, the Department of Economics, one of the most popular departments of the University of Turin, won’t have limited enrolment anymore.

This is what the university assessment commission, an internal technical body that gives non-bonding opinions, decided. The request of introducing limited enrolment again, with an entrance exam, had been made official some time ago. The well-known problem of the lack of professors had been pointed out. In fact, the number of enrolled students keeps growing, while the number of professors is constantly decreasing. This is a negative trend that has been going on for years and that forces the university leaders to think up a solution in order to band-aid the situation.

At the Università di Torino the Department of Economics hasn’t had limited enrolment for only a year. This means that there would have been immediately an about-face.

At the moment, 24 courses have the entrance exam. The Department of Community Services has unlimited enrolment for aspiring students. Last year 120 students enrolled, and it is expected that this year the number will be even higher. The hope is that there won’t be such an overcrowded number of students that the entrance exam will have to be introduced again.

Therefore, the Università di Torino made a request to the Ministry of Education in Rome. There is a need for new and many recruitments in order to solve this problem. It is no longer possible to deny students the right of attending a university department, and not even to keep on exchanging professors in order to carry on a course. We are waiting for news updates to understand what the future of many courses at the Università di Torino will be like.

On April 27^th 2017 at 6 p.m. there is a meeting in Circolo dei Lettori (Via Bogino, 9 – Turin) about the topic “Betting on people. The strength of the distributed leadership”. Roberto Di Monaco and Silvia Pilutti will present their book (published by Egea).

During this presentation they will also talk about the many strategic initiatives the University of Turin is promoting to support the innovation 4.0 of the businesses: the high demand of research and education goes beyond the technical aspects of innovation – the business performance must be improved and, to do this, all the disciplinary competence is required.

Introduction

Silvio Aime, vice-dean for the scientific research at the University of Turin

Sergio Scamuzzi, vice-dean for communication at the University of Turin

Others will take the floor:

Marcello Bogetti, director of LABNET

Marcello Bugari, responsible for ACADEMY Reale Mutua Group

Andrea Franco, vice-president of HR Magneti Marelli Spa

Maurizio Gattiglio, Gruppo Prima Industrie

Guido Stratta, vice-president of HR Enel Spa.

How to promote innovation today in the small- and medium-sized enterprises?

Which cultural initiatives can optimise the impact on the competitiveness of the technologies 4.0?

 This book is about research, experience and discussion of the most recent contributes to the international literature and suggests a management and leadership model which focuses on the creation of cultural and social bases for innovation. The technological investments are important but are not enough to create innovative business models. To be competitive, it is necessary to invest in people, improve their expertise, the quality of the social processes in the business and the cooperation levels. For this reason, the leadership model must be modernized.

The theory of the “distributed” leadership could make the business give value to the knowledge of its talented people and could improve the practicality of the instruments used to cooperate and to manage knowledge.

In this book other traditional business strategies are suggested: performance, expertise, motivation, monitoring activities, education, avoiding hierarchies and charismatic leaders. At the end of the book you can find a guide for the evaluation of the processes carried out to improve the organisation of the share capital in favour of innovation.

The European project LifeCycle is financed with 10,4 million euros and is part of the activities Horizon 2020: 250 thousand children and parents will be the object of the first European network of studies and innovative research on the respiratory and mental health of the new-born. The results of the research will be translated into new prevention and intervention policies which focus on the first years of life.

LifeCycle is based on an innovative research method which analyses the causes of premature stress (lifestyle, diseases, exposure to drugs or other substances etc.), starting from the embryonic phase, which will influence the health during the whole life, to the birth, until the adult age.

The University of Turin is the only Italian partner in the international and multidisciplinary Consortium which gathers 18 partners coming from 10 European countries and Australia. It will be financed with more than 500 thousand euros in order to develop methods, create the indicators to evaluate the socio-economic impact on the mental and respiratory health and contribute to the specific studies of the cohort NINFEA on the effects and the involved procedure.

The objective of this project is to enrich the figures which are already available in the single cohorts thanks to new indicators of environmental exposure (air pollution, noise, urban elements), socio-economic conditions (economic situation of the family, study level, first- or second-generation migrants) and lifestyle (diet, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, sleeping patterns). The factors that influence the risk of developing non-transmitted diseases will be identified and there will be the promotion of intervention and prevention policies also through apps about the premature exposure.

The objective of the European research programme Clean Sky 1 is to reduce CO2 emissions, greenhouse gasses and noises in the aeronautics. The project JTI Clean Sky GETREADY “High speed turbine casing produced by powder HIP technology” ranked third during the Award for the Best Project from Partners and Consortia. The project was directed by the National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology and carried out by a research department of Politecnico di Torino.

The award was given to professor Sara Biamino and professor Daniele Ugues of the Department of Applied Sciences and Technology, who coordinated the project. They took the prize during the Clean Sky 1 Closing Event (21^st-22^nd March 2017) in Brussels on behalf of the whole Consortium, composed of the French business Aubert&Duval, by a research department of Politecnico di Torino (coordinated by professor Stefano Beretta) and by Avio Aereo of Rivalta Torinese, Topic Manager of the project.

The project has shown that the material engineering, the production and the processing of the materials through heating systems enable the design and the production of more efficient products, which will be able to work in worse conditions and thanks to which we can reduce the wastefulness of precious raw materials.

During the project an innovative production technology has been used: it is called Net Shape Hot Isostatic Pressing (NSHIP) and allows the production of a turbine casing (that is the case around the turbine) by using a nickel super alloy that cannot be easily shaped and that, for this reason, cannot be used to produce the same part with a traditional production technology. With the project NSHIP the process starts with the powders of the chosen material; they are then put into a mould and heated up to 1200 degrees and with a pressure of around 1000 bar, until the final product is ready. Pressurising the materials is what makes the materials to “densify” and take the required form. With the project GETREADY two samples of casings have been produced thanks to this technology. The processing of the materials through best heating systems and their optimal shaping enabled us to obtain hot mechanical properties that are superior than the materials used now, thanks to which we have been able to solve problems which, otherwise, couldn’t have been resolved through the technologies we have used until today. If we produce a 90-kilo casing with the above-mentioned solution, we benefit from the raw materials by 75%, whereas with the traditional method we benefit from it only by 13%. The nickel super alloys are expensive and hard to find, since they are made of nickel but also of other high-quality materials. For this reason, it is very important to make good use of the raw materials: it is an advantage for the environment as well.

Another proof of the technical quality of the obtained results is the award the casing got in Hamburg (Germany): it awarded the prize of the European Association of Powder Metallurgy (EPMA) as best product of the year produced with the Hot Isostatic Processing.

We are now used to seeing an international event here in Turin: Salone dell’Auto, the first outdoor car show in Europe. Car companies, car body designer and design centres exhibit their previews along the tree-lined avenues of Parco Valentino, showing their ideas about the future prototypes and concept cars.

The organisation has decided to present a preview of the event at the Turin Airport with the exhibition “I maestri del car design” (Masters of car design), already been inaugurated and which lasts until 12^th June.

Part of this exhibition is Syrma, the concept car created thanks to the collaboration between the students in Transportation Design of IED Torino and Quattroruote. Other prototypes you can find here are Gumpert Tornante of Touring Superleggera and Mole Costruzione Artigianale of UP Design. The visitors can admire not only the cars, but also rough sketches.

According to Andrea Levy, president of Parco Valentino, the fair is a “national and international event: we have attracted at least 800 thousand people here in Turin. We have chosen Turin Airport as location of this exhibition in order to give travellers the opportunity to see what will be later showed at Parco Valentino from 7^th to 11^th June, where they can admire the most elegant part of the fair: the car design section.”

With the stability law 2017 new regulations about the university dues have been defined and are entering into force from the academic year 2017/18.

If you want to benefit from the reduction of the university dues for the academic year 2017/18, you have to ask for an ISEE for the facilitated services for the right to study by the 31^st August 2017.

The university will get the ISEE for the facilitated services for the right to study and will define the dues each student has to pay.

For further information, please ask Ufficio Tasse e Accertamenti. You can find the contacts on the website of the University.

Starting from next year, around 10 thousand students enrolled in Politecnico di Torino can benefit from the GTT Card and up to 22 thousand free Museums Cards.

All this is allowed by a booming balance of Politecnico di Torino: for this reason, starting from next year all the students who take the exams constantly can take advantage of two new free services.

This is what the board of directors of Politecnico have decided today. The first new aspect is the amount of the dues the students will have to pay to Politecnico: “We think that there will be 2,5 million Euros earnings less than the last years, and it is an advantage for our students to reorganise the dues system”, says the vice-dean Anita Tabacco.

The second new aspect is about the “welfare package”, in which Politecnico is going to invest 2,3 million Euros. The free yearly pass GTT will be given to all the students with a familiar income under 30.500 per year; there are no limitations upon the Museums Cards, instead. To benefit from any of these two services, the students have to make a specific request and award a minimum number of credits. These are the minimum requirements defined in the last stability law: the new enrolled students (both in Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees) can benefit from these two services immediately, while the students who attend the second year have to have gotten at least 10 credits and the ones of the third year at least 25 credits over the last 12 months.

“We had had the package “Vivitorino” for years and it was used only by a small range of students. After that experience, we have decided to extend this opportunity to all students, enabling them to live our city at best and to enjoy the museums of Turin”, explains the vice-dean Tabacco.

The Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) issued the decree that regulates the entrance requirements for the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree courses together with the dates when the entrance tests for the academic year 2017/18 take place.

The procedure and the content of the tests and the number of places available for the enrolment will be defined in the next decree.

On March 30^th at 5 p.m. a new exhibition is taking place at the former library Biblioteca Centro Civico in Corso Vercelli, 15, Turin. This exhibition will be followed by a debate about the urban renewal organised by Politecnico di Torino.

Around 60 students of the Sustainable Design Atelier at the department of Architecture, a course of study coordinated by professors Gustavo Ambrosini and Alezio Rivotti, worked together from October 2016 to January 2017 in order to design a new future for one of the most discussed areas of the city, where there are many urgent problems: the area Ponte Mosca.

Through this project the students have developed many potential renewal strategies: they developed a new design for the educational area and planned new educational activities, which can be an inspiration for discussions about the possible directions of growth of this area.

The professors and the students of the Atelier will present their projects at Circoscrizione 7, where Luca Deri (President of Circoscrizione 7) and Guido Montanari (Deputy Mayor of Turin) will be present as well. Many experts have been invited to this presentation: Marco Marocco (Deputy Mayor of Città Metropolitana), Giovanni Monterosso (Assessor of the City Heritage and City Planning – Città Metropolitana), Marta Levi (Edisu) and Giovanni Durbiano (Politecnico di Torino, Architecture and Design).