Collegio Alessandro Volta | University of Pavia | www.collegiovolta.org

The 2013/14 A Volta lecture will take place in the College lecture theatre at 5.30 pm and the poster can be downloaded here.  While poverty has declined in the past decades, humanity continues to face urgent and complex challenges. As much as 1 billion people still live in deep poverty, while rising inequality and social exclusion seem to accompany the rising prosperity in many countries. It is in this context that the World Bank Group emerges as one of the most important sources of financial and technical assistance to developing countries. The World Bank Group has established two ambitious but achievable goals to guide its work: (i) to end extreme poverty at the global level within a generation and (ii) to promote what may be called “shared prosperity”: a sustainable increase in the well-being of the poorer segments of society. These goals are well-aligned with the overall objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) process and reiterate the Bank's commitment to support it and to helping shape the Post-2015 Agenda. The seminar seeks to give a short overview about what the Bank is doing to this end, where and how it works, how it is structured or how decisions are made. It will also explain how the Bank adapts to a changing world and how it works with other development partners to tackle these challenges.

References:

[1]  The World Bank. Annual Report 2012.
[2]  The World Bank Group Goals. End Extreme Poverty and Promote Shared Prosperity.

Julia Barrera has more than 10 years experience in development and environmental policy.  A Spanish-national, Julia joined the World Bank in 2005 and has worked extensively on policy dialogue with European stakeholders on a wide range of issues. She is currently based in Rome (Italy), where she deals with Southern European countries (including Italy) and UN institutions. Julia has also worked for the Latin America region of the World Bank, dealing with partnerships and outreach on sustainable development. Previous to joining the World Bank, she worked on environmental and economic policy issues at the European Commission and the Spanish government, among others. Julia holds an MSc in Economics from Humboldt University in Berlin, with a focus on environmental economics.

The first C Moreschi lecture will be given on 10th of March at 11.00 am in Lecture Theatre 7 (Polo didattico di Ingegneria) by Lorenzo Moretta from Institute G Gaslini (Genoa) and the University of Genoa.  The lecture, entitled NK cells: from surface receptors to the treatment of high-risk leukaemias, will address the biology of natural killer (NK) lymphocytes and their therapeutic exploitation in subjects with high-risk leukaemias.

The lecture poster can be downloaded here.  Further details of the event will be posted in the coming days.

As the end of semester 1 is approaching, this offers College students the opportunity to review the work and progress achieved in the first half of the academic year.

The College will use this opportunity to update the student marks in the College database and assess whether each student is making good progress toward the requirements for confirmation of College placement and any other goal that members of Volta have set themselves (for example: requirements for applications for studying abroad, applications for external bursaries and fellowships, etc).

Volta students of undegraduate Courses and MSc Courses are requested to submit to the College Master a full breakdown of the examinations that they have entered at the end of semester 1 (including examination dates and marks) by Friday the 14th of March and this information is best provided by submitting a copy of the student's records from the University online system (Esse3).  They should also indicate, while submitting the examination results, whether they intend to apply for confirmation of their College placement for the academic year 2014/15 or whether they intend to leave the College by end of July 2014.

Visiting students, ie Erasmus students, diploma students (ie students enrolled in the two-year Course organised by Pavia, Citta' della Formazione), students of MA Courses, PhD students, postgraduate medical students and post-doctoral fellows need not submitting examination results by March 14 because their work is either not assessd by College (Erasmus) or assessed differently (other categories).  The students in question will receive separate information about confirmation of their College placement later in the year. An email will be sent to all College students in the coming das requesting the information outlined here.

The first Marco Fraccaro lecture, organised jointly with Collegio Cairoli, and due to take place on March 3rd, has been postponed to March 31st 2014. It will be given by the British embryologist and geneticist Ian Wilmut at 5.00 pm in the 'Aula Magna' of the University, accessible via the main University gate and court in Strada Nuova. 

An abstract of the lecture, entitled From Dolly to the treatment of human disease, and a short biography of Ian Wilmut are given in the relevant web page. A short biography of Marco Fraccaro, the geneticst of the University of Pavia to whom the lecure is dedicated, is also offered below.

Marco Fraccaro (26 September 1926 - 2 April 2008) was a distinguished geneticist and Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pavia for over thirty years. Born in Pavia, he attended the local Liceo Classico Ugo Foscolo with and the Medical School of the University of Pavia where he graduated in 1950. After a few years at the local Institute of Pathological Anatomy he moved to Lionel Penrose in the Galton Laboratory at UCL in 1954 with a fellowship from the British Council and, a year later, to Jan Book’s laboratory in Uppsala where he stayed until 1958 during which time he met his future wife Inga. In 1960, he moved to the newly formed MRC Population Genetics Research Unit in Oxford under Alan Stevenson where he continued his work on cytogenetics that he had initiated in Uppsala. He returned to Pavia in 1962 where he started a highly successful and productive laboratory with funding from NATO and EURATOM and where he took up the Chair of Human Genetics, which he held until 2001.

Throughout his research Marco Fraccaro focussed primarily on sex chromosome abnormalities, especially the genetic abnormalities responsible for abnormal physical and sexual development, but he contributed to several other areas of Genetics such as the distribution in the population of specific types of congenital malformations and the effect of radiation on chromosomes of cells. Marco Fraccaro was deeply attached to Pavia and Oxford and there was hardly a conversation in which he failed to mention the life and history of these two cities. His love for Oxford was also expressed in a small book of quotations (Oxford for strangers of all sorts) which he published in 1997. From 1971 until 2002 he was Master of Collegio Cairoli, one of the University Colleges at Pavia. He run the College informally and effectively and made Cairoli a place of learning and debate for students and staff. He also made it into a meeting point for modern visual arts by organising a successful series of exhibitions of modern artists that will enrich the College for years to come. Marco Fraccaro has been one of the defining personalities of the University of Pavia in the second half of the 20th century and the lecture aims to recognise his interests in Science and the Arts and his intellectual legacy.