Collegiate Universities
College will debate the history, value and scope of Collegiate Universities on Tuesday the 29th of October 2019 at 6.00 pm in the main College lecture theatre.
The meeting will include contributions from E Gherardi of Collegio A Volta at the University of Pavia about the Collegiate Universities in the United Kingdom and from M Ryan, former Dean of Jonathan Edwards College at Yale University, about the development of a collegiate system at several American Universitiies, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The meeting also aims to reflect upon and discuss the current structure of the Collegiate system of the University of Pavia and ways in which this system can be safeguarded and developed in future years.
All students of Collegio Volta are warmly invited to join this event and participate in the discussion. The poster of the event can be found here.
Image: Collegio P Fraccaro and University towers, Pavia.
Library Support
The College aims to offer a formal library service from early November as soon as EDiSU will have completed the procedures for allocating teaching and support responsibilities to the students who have expressed an interest in such roles.
Meanwhile, College is pleased to inform its members that Francesco Cervellera, a year 3 medical undergraduate in the Golgi Course has kindly agreed to provide an interim library loan service. Francesco will not sit at the library desk on specific days of the week and at specific times but can be reached by email or phone either directly or via the porter's desk. These arrangements will last until further notice, namely until a formal library service will be in place.
College would like to express its thanks to Francesco for this valuable and generous contribution to College life and studies.
Image: the JTM Needham College library (photograph by former Volta undergraduate S Tondi).
Health & Safety Induction
On the 28h of October 2019 Fabio R Collamati, the EDiSU Advisor/Consultant on matters of Health & Safety will meet the new students of Collegio Volta and Collegio Golgi for a Health & Safety Induction. The meeting will take place at 6.30 pm in the College lecture theatre of Collegio Volta.
All Volta students who entered College on or after the 1st of September 2018 must attend this meeting. EDiSU will monitor attendance and students who fail to attend the meeting may be asked to leave College as Health & Safety induction is a statutory requirement. College requests therefore that all Volta freshers attend this EDiSU Health & Safety meeting without exception.
Student Counselling
College students who run into difficulties with their academic work should contact the College director without delay and discuss with him the necessary remedial actions. However, College students who run into difficulties with their personal life - often compounded with problems in their academic career - typically need additional support beyond the one often available from friends, family or College.
The University now runs an effective student counselling service provided by Paola Ferrari, a psychologist based at Centro di Orientamento who can be contacted by email or phone (details obtainable from the University email and phone search page.
College students are strongly encouraged to seek advice and support through this service whenever they see that other measures have failed to solve their prolems. The Service is free and available to all undergraduate and graduate students students in residence at Volta in either Italian or English languages.
Volta Students Union
The College invites nominations for election of the executive of the Volta Students Union for the academic year 2019/20. The executive will consist of six students: three undergraduates and three postgraduates.
Although the 21st of October was indicated at students meetings as a deadline for nominations, the deadline is extended here to Tuesday the 22nd of October due to this late web posting.
Election day will be Monday the 28th of October. Ballot boxes will be placed at the porter's desk from 8.00 am to 7.00 pm. Candidates who stand for election are requested to meet with other students and explain their ideas and proposals for College life and work The College expects strong participation of the students' community in this exercise of democracy and would like to thank all students who put themselves forward for election in the VSU executive.
College Courses
Volta students can now enrol in College Courses (Personal Development, How to Write a Dissertation, Computer Coding, Web Deisgn, Latex, Italian, French, German and English) by entering their names on the forms available at the porter's desk. Enrolment should take place before Friday the 18th of October as College expects most Courses to start early in November,
English Courses will be given in College by members of the Centro Linguistico of the University of Pavia and attendance requires that students sit a placement test (Oxford Online Placement Test) developed by the University of Oxford and delivered online by Oxford University Press. Placement tests for the German and French Courses will be arranged and delivered directly by the student or junior member of University staff who delivers the Course. Students invited sitting the Oxford Online Placement Test should do so before the date indicated in the email sent by the Head of College and Oxford University Press in teh week starting on the 21st of October.
All College freshers are expected to sit the English placement test unless they hold a recent C1 certification. Other College students who know their level of English to be below the C1 grade should also enrol in the English Courses and sit the placement test, regardless of the fact that they may have sat the test before. College will confirm the level of the classes available and further details of the Courses one the placement ttests have been completetd.
English are supported by EDiSU and enrolment is free provided that student attend a minumum 80% of the lessons scheduled.
Academic Diary
As discussed briefly during the assembly of 7th October and the Freshers' meeting lof 14th October, College requests that students keep track of their extra-curricular activities in order to submit these data to the University and the Ministry for Education, Universities and Research (MIUR).
Briefly, tudents are asked to download a copy of a standard academic diary from the College website, print the diary on separate sheets - not back to front - and avoid stapling as this will hamper scanning for electronic data submission at a later stage. Students should complete the diary by recording their attendance to courses, supervisions, lectures, seminars, etc in College by entering title, date and duration of the teaching in hours where relevant, They should also ask the supervisor to sign attendance at College tutorials and the head of College to sign attendance at external lectures/seminars.
All College students are warmly invited to keep an academic diary. Diary keeping is compulsory for students who have entered Collegio A Voltai after 1 October 2017.
Image: Two pages from one of Charles Darwin’s Beagle voyage diaries.
Freshers' Meeting
College wishes to organise a further meeting with freshers on Monday 14th October at 9.00 pm in order to discuss a number of issues that were touched briefly during the General College Assembly but that require further discussion, especially among freshers. The agenda of the meeting includes:
- academic diary
- college courses
- house matters
- students wellbeing
- medical care
- breakfast rooms
- students representation
- students and alumni society
- rules and regulation.
All freshers are expect to attend. Students of other years also interested in one or more of the topics listed are also welcome.
Introduction to Courses
At the start of semester one, the College organises a number of meeting between students and official course coordinators (presidi di facoltà, presidenti dei consigli di corso di laurea, etc). These meetings, which involve a brief introduction to the course by the coordinator followed by a questions & answers session, have proved to be extremely valuable in the past in order to enable the students of Volta to focus on key subjects and identify course problems and pittfalls at the very start of the academic year.
The meetings currently scheduled are listed below, the ones concerning the medical courses will be added shortly. The title sof the meeting/subject are links to the relevant posters.
08 October. 5.00 pm. Mathematics (F Bonsante)
15 October. 6.00 pm. Chemical and Pharmaceutical Technologies (S Collina)
16 October. 6.00 pm. Physics (B Pasquini)
23 October 5.00 pm. Medicine (C Esposito)
24 October. 6.00 pm. Engineering (C Cusano)
College Assembly
The General Annual,assembly of Collegio A Volta will take place on Monday the 7th of October in the College lecture theatre.
The General Annual Assembly marks the beginning of the academic year at Volta and presents the essential aspects of the life and work of the College. Topics include: (i) students’ role and representation, (ii) the academic results of the previous year, (iii) the work plan for the year ahead (iv) College courses, tutorials, lectures and seminars and, (v) the activities of students’ clubs and societies. All College students are invited to participate, attendance is mandatory for new College students (freshers). The poster of the Assembly is available here.
Image: The College Assembly of 1 October 2018.
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College Teaching
EDiSU have published a call of interest for students interested in contributing to College teaching or support activities. The teaching of Volta involves courses (personal development, computing, languages (except English) and supervisions: informal, small group, interactive teaching devoted to specifc subjects and courses. Support activities involve primarily the library loan service and database maintenance and updates.
The text of the call for interest is available at this page on the EDiSU website and here and lists all teaching and support activites that the College aims to carry out during the coming academic year. It also lists teaching and support activities available at other EDiSU Colleges. The application form is available on the same web page as well as here. The deadline for applications is 12.00 noon on the 18th of October. Instructions on how to submit the application are given in the text of both the call and the form.
College-based teaching is a and distinctive quintessential trait of Collegio Volta and all students of Collegio A Volta interested in contributing to the College teaching or support activities are strongly encouraged to apply. They are also entitled to apply, if interested, for teaching or support roles in other EDiSU Colleges.
Image: A Chemistry supervision at Collegio A Volta (2016/17).
CUS - Open Day
The official sports society of the University of Pavia (Centro Universitario Sportivo, CUS) is a very active component of the life of this University and plays a major role in ensuring that many students at Pavia are actively engaged in individual or team sports.
CUS will hold an open day on October 5th starting at 10.00 am at one of their sites: Il capannone dei campioni, 1 via Don Boschetti, Pavia. Prospective members of CUS will have achance during the day of trying out workouts and equipment and discussing with CUS staff enrolment and prospective levels of engagement. A berbecue with music - starting at 6.00 pm - will close the event.
The sport achievements of Collegio A Volta have risen steadily in the last few years and College invites all/most of its students to engage in sport under the umbrella of CUS. Further information is available from S Ramat (Department of Computer and Industrial Engineering). A poster of the event can be downloaded here.
Image: the team of the coxless four boat that won the world championship (light weight) in Luzern in 2017 included two students from Pavia and active members of CUS: Matteo Mulas and Piero Sfiligoi (first and second from left).
Resonance in Biology
Collegio A Volta is a co-organiser and host to a major meeting entitled Resonance in Biology and devoted to a discussion of the biological applications of nuclear magneric resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The meeting will take place in the College lecture theatre on 13th (afternoon) and 14th September 2019 (all day). The poster of the meeting can be found here. Participation is free but all participants are requested to register for attendance at this link.
NMR spectroscopy constitutes a fundamental approach for the study of the structure and dynamics of biological molecules and has further applications in the study of metabolism amd drug discovery. The meeting will offer a comprehensive overview of recent advances across major areas of research (see programme below) and constitutes a special occasion for three major celebrations, namely:
(i) the early and important contributions that the University of Pavia made to NMR spectroscopy through the work of Luigi Giulotto and Attilio Rigamonti. The latter will lecture at the meeting.
(ii) the lifelong and major contributions to NMR spectroscopy by Pierandrea Temussi, the Italian scientist who pioneered biological applications of NMR in Italy and actively contributes, to this day, to the theoretical and experimental development of NMR spectroscopy.
(iii) the recent arrival at Pavia of a high-field (700 MHz) NMR spectrometre, currently being installed at Centro Grandi Strumenti, an instrument that will enable scientists in Pavia to tackle a number of new research projects in the biomedical area, from structural and dynamic analysis of biological molecules to drug discovery.
Meeting Programme
Day 1 - 13th of September
14.00-14.15 Ermanno Gherardi (UniPv) Welcome and introduction
14.15-14.45 Attilio Rigamonti (UniPv) First NMR Steps Under Luigi Giulotto
14.45-15.30 Janez Plavec (Slovenian NMR center) Structural plasticity of G-rich DNA regions
15.30-15.45 Coffee/Tea break
15.45-16.15 Rita Puglisi (King’s College London) Joint use of nuclear magnetic resonance and native mass spectrometry in the investigation of protein interactions
16.15-16.45 Giovanna Musco (UniMi) Diflunisal targets the HMGB1/CXCL12 heterocomplex and blocks immune cell recruitment
16.45-17.15 Giorgio Colombo (UniPv) Dynamic disruption of protein interactions
17.15-17.45 Chiara Marabelli (UniPv) Molecular mechanism of nucleosome recognition by the histone demethylases
Day 2 - 14th of September
9.30-10.15 Sasi Conte (King’s College London) Insights into protein-RNA recognition from the La-related protein superfamily
10.15-10.45 Annamaria D’Ursi (UniSa) NMR screening of new potential inhibitors if farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase
10.45-11.00 Coffee/Tea break
11.00-11.30 Caterina Alfano (RiMed) Recombinant mussel protein Pvfp-5β: a potential tissue bioadhesive
11.30-12.00 Roberta Spadaccini (UniSannio) MNEI, a sweet protein for every season
12.00-12.30 Andrea Motta (CNR) Novel of the Phenotype
12.30-13.00 Neri Niccolai (UniSi) From PISA to PAVIA: an amazing bioinformatic journey (spiced with some NMR)
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-14.45 Mario Piccioli (UniFi)
14.45-15.15 Orlando Crescenzi (UniNa)
15.15-15.30 Coffee/Tea break
15.30-16.00 Stefano Mammi (UniPd) Targeting the bcl-2 protein family: a combined NMR and in-silico approach for fragment based drug discovery
16.00-16.30 Mariagrazia Pizza (GSK) New technologies and vaccines
16.30-17.00 Claudio Toniolo (UniPd) Personal Recollections From A Life-Long Scientific Journey With Pierandrea
17.00-17.10 Concluding Remarks
Resonance in Biology
A major meeting will take place in the College lecture theatre on September 13th (afternoon) and 14th (all day) on biological and medical applications of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. NMR spectroscopy constitutes a fundamental approach for the study of the structure and dynamics of biological molecules and for drug discovery and the meeting will offer a comprehensive overview of recent advances across major areas of research. The meeting also constitutes a special occasion for celebrations of:
(i) early and important contributions that the University of Pavia made to NMR spectroscopy through the work of Enrico Giulotto and Attilio Rigamonti. The latter will lecture at the meeting
(ii) the lifelong and major contributions to NMR spectroscopy by Pierandrea Temussi, the Italian scientist who pioneered biological applications of NMR in Italy and actively contributes, to this day, to the theoretical and experimental development of NMR spectroscopy.
(iii) the recent arrival at Pavia of a high-field (700 MHz) NMR spectrometre, currently being installed at Centro Grandi Strumenti, an instrument that will enable scientists in Pavia to tackle a number of new research projects in the biomedical area, from structural and dynamic analysis of biological molecules to drug discovery.
All College students are warmly invited to participate in this evemt. The poster of the meeting can be found here. Furher information is available on a separate page. Participation is free but all participants are requested to register for attendance at this link.