Venice, Jan. 27, 2025 – The opening ceremony of the Winter School Interdisciplinary Biodiversity 2025 was held today at the Marino Berengo Hall of Ca’ Foscari University. This interdisciplinary training program involves 30 young researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, from all over the world, selected by a scientific committee composed of scientists and humanists from CNR and Ca’ Foscari University.
The Winter School is organized by the School for International Education of Ca’ Foscari University in collaboration with the Institute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) and sponsored by the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC). The goal is to provide tools and definitions for understanding and managing biodiversity from different perspectives: biological, climate, philosophical and social, economic and legal.
The inaugural event was attended by Prof. Maria Chiara Carrozza, President of the CNR, and Cons. Luigi Fiorentino, President of the NBFC and Prof. Marcomini, Pro-rector of Ca’Foscari. Prof. Carrozza gave the school’s introductory lecture, emphasizing the importance of the interdisciplinary approach to the topic of biodiversity, with the aim of protecting it and understanding the potential it offers in the context of development. She also outlined the crucial role played by the Biodiversity Gateway within NBFC in this regard.
The Winter School program offers an integrated view of biodiversity, addressing topics ranging from ecology to legislation, molecular biology to anthropology. The first inaugural day moderated by the school’s corrdinator, Prof. Corinna Guerra, historian of science at Ca’ Foscari’s Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, featured talks by Dr. Diego Fontaneto of CNR-IRSA in Verbania on “How to study biodiversity from an ecological perspective,” followed by lectures by Ca’ Foscari University experts Prof. Pietro Omodeo and Juskas Patkauskas on “Geoanthropology in the Anthropocene Paradigm” and Dr. Silvia Francescon “Biodiversity in the legal and political systems.”
