Oct. 8 – Over 100 students from all over Europe met in Bratislava in occasion of the EU contest for young scientists. The students admitted had similar profiles: excellent, passed the harsh selections set up by the organizations in each of the 36 participating countries – which have been going on for over a year now, and further selected by the European Commission’s General Directorate for Research. The admitted candidates proposed a total of 79 projects, three of which were Italian, for a total of 6 participants. The top awards have been assigned to Ireland, for physics, Poland, for chemistry, and Austria, for engineering, while two of the Italian projects received particular praise. Anastasia, Ilaria and Sebastian, from the Malignani Institute in Udine, claimed, “it was an incredible experience that surpassed our wildest imagination.” The students were accompanies by Eliana Ginevra, their biology teacher, with whom the built a project for a new protocol on gastrointestinal stromal cancers. Their prize will be to spend a week in Ispra, at the Common Research Center of the European Union. Luca and Michele, two prospective engineers from the Marconi Institute in Rovereto, were awarded the participation to the 2013 Phoenix Isef/Intel seminar. They insist, “winning this is an incredible motivation for us to pursue our studies in this field of research.”
