First-year students Catarina (Slovakia), Fatima (Italy), Noela (Croatia), Lotta (Finland) and Maria Luisa (Spain) along with second years Avery (USA), Camilla (Denmark), José (Mexico), Mara (Montenegro), Poorva (India), Takuto (Japan) and Tessa (Barbados), traveled by bus to Baia Mare, Romania for their Project week.
A new entry this year is a Project Week dedicated to scientific research in Pisa
They spent 5 days there working with Sister Gabriela in her shelter for homeless children in the Craica district. With the help of Father Albano and a few volunteers Sister Gabriela runs a shelter where these unfortunate children can spend the night and have three meals a day. Sister Gabriela also runs a small school for them, as they are not welcome in any of the local schools. Our students therefore gave a hand both in the kitchen, in the school and spent the evenings entertaining them with music and dancing – teaching them the “cup song” and some basic Italian too. They also helped Farther Albano distribute wood to the poorest families in the area who gave them a really warm welcome. An amazing experience, as the pictures below clearly show.
This year a group of first and second year students particularly keen on scientific subjects dedicated their project week to getting to know the research world in Pisa: Ahmed (Egypt), Antonella (Italy), Fanni (Hungary), Francesco and Laura (both from Italy), and Seda (Bulgaria). In the 5 days they spent in the Tuscan town that is best known for its leaning tower they managed to visit an amazing number of research institutes and facilities.
On day 1 they had the chance to attend the Engineering faculty’s open day, visiting some installations and laboratories and meeting with Pisa university students. The following day the group headed for the VIRGO interferometer, a huge research facility for the detection of gravitational waves. They also attended a presentation on the topic of gravitational waves and the way in which VIRGO works, what its findings are and its future research projects. This was followed by a visit the interferometer’s structure and its amazing 3 km long ”arms”, learning more about its components and functions. It was an incredibly exciting experience, which provided significant insights on a topical research field. The next day was dedicated to visiting the NEST Labs and learning about the main research issues its research teams are working on. This was a great opportunity to dive into advanced physics and biophysics at the nano scale as well as into virtual reality applications in research.
On day 4 our students spent the morning at the BioLabs of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pontedera. Being familiar with the mechanism of regrowing whole plants from a few cells, there they saw several examples, as well as the different types of microscopes used to capture pictures at the microscale. On the other hand, they spent the afternoon visiting Museo Piaggio, where they saw many kinds of the typical Italian bikes called Vespa, some cars and an aircraft – all built between 1940 and 1960. Their final destination for the day was SITAEL, a company that works mainly with space technology.
On the last day the group visited a day centre for the elderly to entertain them with music and singing and to engage in discussions on their UWC experience and their home countries. The rest of the day was spent roaming around Pisa, exploring the city and, hardly surprsing, making time for one last visit to Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
