The University of Genoa has a new Rector. On 3 July, Antonio Uccelli, a 61-year-old neurologist and former Scientific Director of the IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, won the run-off election with 942.21 votes against Michele Piana’s 844.82, following an election with a record turnout of nearly 90%. He will take office on 1 November 2026, with a term running until 2032.
The word he has chosen for his term is “Sharing”. Uccelli describes a university that needs to be brought back together, one that is “divided”, where technical, library and healthcare staff and academic staff regard one another with distrust. His starting point is listening: “I will use the method I applied at San Martino, which worked: results can only be achieved by involving everyone.” The same principle applies beyond the university’s walls. The university, he says, must be “a driving force for the local area”, “a point of reference for institutions and the business community”, capable of “transferring knowledge and technology”.
This is where the new Rector spoke about Erzelli, challenging the most common interpretation of the project:
“It is a challenge, but also an opportunity to bring about a change of pace in an initiative that is currently seen merely as the relocation of four departments and, by some, as a property development project. For me, it is an opportunity to create an innovative campus that brings together companies working in the life sciences, IIT and what I consider to be an enormous opportunity and a dream: the Centre for Computational Medicine next to the new hospital. All of this opens up highly significant prospects, with the potential to attract investment in what, from my perspective, could become the first research centre of its kind with international competitiveness.”
It is a description that sounds familiar at the GREAT Campus, because it is already partly a reality. IIT is working on the hill. The life sciences already have a well-established presence here. The new hospital in western Genoa, together with its research activities, is one of the next pieces of the project. The “innovative campus” envisioned by Uccelli is not starting from scratch: it is what is taking shape at Erzelli, as seen by someone coming from the heart of Genoa’s biomedical research community.
Uccelli is not calling for a fresh start. “There is no need to tear out the pages of the history we come from,” he said. “We simply need to try to write the pages that remain more effectively.” For the Erzelli campus, where the Polytechnic School and the relocation of the Engineering departments will bring thousands of students, this is precisely the point: a twenty-year story now entering the chapter in which researchers, companies and students will truly make it their home.
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