Annual report 2004 - Compagnia di San Paolo

The I.S.I Foundation’s
laboratories
ISI Foundation - Institute for Scientific Interchange, Turin
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The ISI Foundation of Turin was established in 1983 as an
Association on the initiative of some University and
Polytechnic teachers; in 1988 it became a Foundation, the
founding members are the Piedmont Region, the Province
of Turin, the City of Turin and Cassa di Risparmio di Torino.
Subsequently the Turin Chamber of Commerce entered the
Foundation as external supporter. The institutional
purposes of the Foundation are those of ensuring the
collaboration of prestigious personalities of the world of
science in Turin and Piedmont, creating stable and
continuous relations with international experts and
developing plans and initiatives agreed with the Region
itself. In 2004 the Compagnia awarded a grant to the
ISI Foundation for a total of € 1,300,000 for the
implementation of three initiatives: the continuation of the
project “gene-environment interaction”, the project “the
computational challenge of problems with ties to complex
biological systems” and the University 2nd level Master’s
Degree programme in Epidemiology of the University of
Turin and the ISI Foundation. The first initiative relates to
the continuation of the study – initiated in 1999 and
previously financed by the Compagnia from then to 2003 –
on the genetic susceptibility to induction of disease
through environmental exposure such as passive smoking
and exhaust gas pollution, in order to rationalise the
primary prevention of tumours and other chronic diseases
in Piedmont. The second project aims at reinforcing the
group research activity already underway at the ISI
Foundation in the field of computational techniques
applied to life sciences, such as theoretical computing and
statistical mechanics, biomedical applications and virtual
imaging (connected to the virtual colonoscopy project of
the Candiolo Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment),
computing and quantum computation, and neurosciences.
The project principally deals with the developmental
analysis of genes and families of genes, the improvement
of methods and models, the prediction of the structure of
proteins and the neurosciences, with the project on
informatic–neurosciences, in co-operation with the
European Brain Research Institute. The Master’s Degree in
Epidemiology originated in the mid-1990s from the efforts
of the Italian Epidemiology Association and became a 2nd
Level University Masters Degree of the University of Turin
in the years 2003-2004.
The Master’s Degree, with a teaching programme of 1,500
hours of study activities, is aimed at centres with research
activities and operators in the National Health Service. It
proposes to train a group of about fifteen professionals
from the Italian Health Service on subjects connected to
Epidemiology, by way of a two-year residential course and
research activities with national and/or international
institutes.