Departments of excellence: the anvur gives award to the Politecnico di Torino, financing awarded to 5 Departments

A total of five Departments of the Politecnico di Torino have been assessed as “excellent” by the National Assessment Agency (Agenzia nazionale di valutazione, ANVUR), which has selected 180 departmental structures of Italian universities to receive extraordinary funding from the Ministry of University Education (MIUR) for the five-year period 2018-2022, sharing out the overall amount of 271 million Euros set aside annually in accordance with the 2017 budget legislation.

For the Polytechnic, the extra resources amount to 41 million 261 thousand Euros over the five years. The University will receive around 3% of the total funding, a percentage exceeding the weight of the Polytechnic in the national system, which stands at around 2%.

The selected Departments are: Environmental, Land and Infrastructure Engineering; Management and Production Engineering; Applied Science and Technology; "G. L. Lagrange” Mathematical Sciences and the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning. Almost half of the University’s Departments (5 out of 11) have therefore been recognised as excellent. The assessment was made on the basis of projects of a high scientific value prepared and presented in recent months and subsequently scrutinised by a commission of seven experts appointed by the ministry jointly with ANVUR. This means the Politecnico recorded a success rate of 63% of its Departments obtaining funding, above the national average of 51% (180 accepted out of 352 included in the assessment process).

This represents confirmation of the quality of the Politecnico’s research work, as was emphasised by the Rector, Marco Gilli: “This is an extremely positive assessment, which once again confirms how much our research activity is carried out on leading edge issues and with methods and structures that guarantee results of the highest standard, placing our University among the structures that have a number of funded departments above the national average. The Politecnico believes in this initiative and has invested considerable resources in it, both in terms of financing and position: as can be seen, the candidate Departments have been allocated substantial co-financing, in terms of organisational points, in addition to 44 type A research posts, allocated to all the structures.” The funds will be employed to reinforce and enhance the excellent standard of research, with investments in human capital, research infrastructures and teaching activity of the highest qualification. “This is a considerable funding that will be added to the support activity introduced by the University itself during 2017, which are part of the 2018 budget to an amount of 40 million Euros.”, concludes the Rector.

"This is a result,” commented the Vice Rector for Research, Stefano Corgnati, which rewards the quality of the projects submitted, which arose from coherence with the strategies of the University. It is a result achieved through the active support of all our Departments, not only those directly involved: this initiative is yet another opportunity to demonstrate the ability of our University to work as a team and operate with a spirit of service to the success of the whole institution, over and above individual results.”