Towards an integrated university system in the North-West? NODES as a laboratory for cooperation between universities, territories, and businesses
A proposal to strengthen collaboration among universities in the North-West has been relaunched in the pages of La Stampa by the Rector of the Politecnico di Torino, Stefano Corgnati, who aims to establish a federation of universities to jointly address the great challenges of research, innovation, and education, with a cooperative and systemic approach.
The stated goal would be to build a new model of academic governance capable of coordinating educational paths and laboratories, sharing infrastructures and equipment, creating research hubs also open to businesses, attracting greater public and private funding, and enhancing the different territorial vocations.
«Today it no longer makes sense to talk about individual research, we need large infrastructures,» stated the Rector of the Politecnico, who has been appointed President of the NODES Ecosystem, coordinated by the university. «Let’s project ourselves twenty years into the future: those who will succeed will be those able to cover all phases of research, networking technological, humanistic, economic, and legal skills.»
A vision that is already partly a reality
The idea of an academic federation in the North-West could find in experiences like NODES a concrete operational reference.
In this scenario, the NODES Innovation Ecosystem — funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) — represents an already active and concrete experience of inter-university cooperation, involving partner universities (including many of the institutions mentioned in the article) together with research centers, businesses, and local territories.
An ecosystem built on a logic of territorial alliance for innovation, capable of a shared governance structure, a common strategic vision, integration between academic skills and the needs of the production system, and the opening up of infrastructures to serve companies and local communities.
The Ecosystem is demonstrating that networking people, resources, and skills is not only possible but effective: it accelerates processes, strengthens impact, and enhances each territory in its own uniqueness.
In this perspective, the initiative scheduled for May 27 and 28 at the Politecnico di Torino also fits in: the NODES' Tech Sharing Days, a meeting point between research and industry, during which more than 60 academic Proofs of Concept developed by local universities will be presented.
Projects born in university laboratories and already ready to be transferred to the market or society.
These are concrete solutions that demonstrate the value of collaboration among universities, the strength of public research, and the ability to create living connections with the productive world.
