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Lugano Happiness
Forum 2024

17 and 18 June 2024
LAC Lugano Art and Culture

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2023 Fellowship
Winners

Meet them
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Visual Arts and Health

University Course
Cultura e Salute 2024

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Latest from our blog

This blog is dedicated to the most advanced frontiers of scientific research and the innovative therapies that are being tried out around the world. Furthermore it embrace the dialogue between researchers and artists to overcome the damaging barriers that exist between humanist and scientific culture.

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Paolo Rossi Castelli10 Oct 20242 min read

Nanorobot to target cancer cells and spare healthy ones

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Paolo Rossi Castelli27 Sep 20243 min read

First ever successful face and whole-eye transplant

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Catterina Seia17 Sep 20244 min read

Mortality and education: how learning slows the pace of ageing

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Highlighted activities

Cultura e Salute - Conference

Semir Zeki meets the audience

On 15 October at the LAC in Lugano, there will be a meeting with Semir Zeki, professor and founder of Neuroaesthetics. A unique opportunity to delve into the complex brain processes that are activated when we feel deep emotions.
The conference, organised in collaboration with LAC edu, the Cultural Division of the City of Lugano and the Università della Svizzera italiana - USI, will be held in English.

Learn more
Semir-Zeki-HP
IBSA Foundation Fellowships

Fellowships 2024 Call

With the aim of promoting and allowing young and talented researchers to do great science, IBSA Foundation for scientific research offers 6 fellowships of € 32,000 in the following research fields: dermatology, endocrinology, fertility/urology, orthopaedics/rheumatology/pain medicine and Healthy Aging/Regenerative medicine.

Partecipate
Fellowship 2024 Call HP
IBSA Foundation Fellowships

Meet the winners of the 11th edition

The 2023 edition saw a record number of projects received. A total of 248 applicants, mostly women, from over 50 countries participated.  Find out more about the six talented young researchers and their projects.

Discover the winners
HP Fellowship 2023 vincitori
Forum

Lugano Happiness Forum

The first Happiness Forum took place on 17 and 18 June in Lugano, with the aim of bringing together academics, politicians and experts to explore the intricate mechanisms and principles behind human well-being and happiness.

Watch the videos
Happiness HP EN

IBSA Foundation

Our Mission

Scientific outreach
IBSA Foundation is committed to promoting the culture of frontier science. It does so by sharing principles and knowledge, using a language which is accessible to all to encourage the public at large to learn more about health and wellbeing.  The Foundation also harnesses different mediums such as art, music and comic strips to communicate with audiences across many generations and convey scientific knowledge.
Part of an international scientific network 
IBSA Foundation contributes to debate in international science by staging Forums on the results of the latest research in medicine and wellbeing, aimed at scientists, researchers and experts in the field. 
Supporting scientific research
IBSA Foundation supports young students and researchers with its annual Fellowships in a variety of basic research fields. It also fosters academic studies with funding for the Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biomedicine at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). 

Read the Bylaws

Download the PDF

Our team

IBSA Foundation avails of two Boards: two committees of experts in cultural, academic and scientific fields who help bring together events, projects and partnerships. 

The Advisory Board of IBSA Foundation includes influential figures from both academic and cultural spheres. The Scientific Board, on the other hand, sees representatives of international standing from the scientific community. 

Both Boards are coordinated by Silvia Misiti, Director of IBSA Foundation. She is supported by Irene Belatti e Jacopo Crespi for Communication and Sara Comodo for Admin and Events.
  • Advisory board
  • Scientific board
Silvia Misiti_Board
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Silvia Misiti Director of IBSA Foundation, MD and researcher, she obtained a PhD in Molecular endocrinology at Sapienza University of Rome. She lives in Lugano and she is also the Head of Corporate Communication of IBSA Group.Leggi la bio
Catterina Seia_Board
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Catterina Seia Co-Founder and Vice President of the Fitzcarraldo Foundation; Vice President of the Fondazione Medicina a Misura di Donna, President and Associate Founder of CCW-Cultural Welfare CenterLeggi la bio
Enzo Grossi_Board
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Enzo Grossi Surgeon, gastroenterologist, researcher in the field of Pharmaceutical Medicine, Applied Mathematics and Computational Biology, and Art Culture and Health. Expert on culture and health and coordinator of the university course "Cultura e Salute" at USI Lugano.Leggi la bio
Laura Marciano Advisory Board
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Laura Marciano Research Associate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and HappinessLeggi la bio
Silvia Misiti_Board
Leggi la bio
Silvia Misiti Director of IBSA Foundation, MD and researcher, she obtained a PhD in Molecular endocrinology at Sapienza University of Rome. She lives in Lugano and she is also the Head of Corporate Communication of IBSA Group.Leggi la bio
Andrea Alimonti_Board
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Andrea Alimonti Head of the Molecular Oncology Laboratory of the Institute of Oncology Research and of the Molecular Oncology Laboratory of the Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine, Full Professor of Oncology at Università della Svizzera italiana, Full Professor of Pharmacology at Università degli Studi di Padova, Full Professor of Experimental Oncology and Translational Cancer Medicine at ETH ZurichLeggi la bio
Antonio Musarò_Board
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Antonio Musarò Full Professor of Histology, Embryology and Biotechnology, Neuromuscular Research Group, Tissue Engineering Unit at the Sapienza University of RomeLeggi la bio
bruno_imthurn-1
Leggi la bio
Bruno Imthurn Prof, M.D., Senior Consultant 360° Fertility Center Zurich.Full Professor emeritus for Reproductive Medicine and Gynecological Endocrinology, University of Zurich.Past Chairman of the Department for Reproductive Endocrinology, University Hospital Zurich.Past Head of the Fertility Center, University Hospital Zurich.Leggi la bio
Domenico Salvatore_Board
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Domenico Salvatore Full Professor of Endocrinology, Department of Molecular and Clinical Endocrinology at the University of Naples Federico IILeggi la bio
Christian Walfrum_Board
Leggi la bio
Christian Wolfrum Full Professor of the Institute of Food Nutrition and Health at the ETH ZurichLeggi la bio

Partnership

IBSA Foundation works alongside academic and cultural organisations to help achieve its mission:

City of Lugano - Department for Culture

IBSA Foundation and the City of Lugano have set up a 2020-2022 three-year project aimed at promoting the integration of the arts in healthcare facilities. The Cultura e Salute (“Culture and Health“) project promotes and supports initiatives and good practices that see the alliance between art and health as a new tool for increasing people’s quality of life.

The project stems from the knowledge that a greater alliance between two seemingly distant worlds, like art and physical and psychological wellbeing, can result in better standards of living, both inside and outside healthcare facilities and treatment centers, as demonstrated by various initiatives over the years in Switzerland and abroad. The Cultura e Salute project will also be backed by a prestigious Scientific Committee and will count on the collaboration with USI – Università della Svizzera italiana.

The Cultura e Salute project will focus on three main activities: the organization of annual forums on the relationship between culture and health; the launch of a website culturaesalute.ch; and a fund to support partnership projects between artists and healthcare facilities for the development of cultural activities in treatment centers, which will be launched in the fall of 2020 with a public notice aimed at organizations in the region interested in contributing to this initiative.
DECS - Department of education, culture and sport of Canton Ticino

IBSA Foundation has been working with the Department of Education, Culture and Sport of Canton Ticino (DECS) since 2018.

The partnership, which involves the DECS secondary education division and the secondary  school students in Ticino, led to the creation of the Let’s Science! series of books.
In each book the scientist introduces and explains a particular topic, which is then reworked by the students, becoming a comic strip inspired by the lesson.

Let’s Science! the creative science project, designed and promoted as a way of spreading scientific knowledge and targeted primarily at middle school students in Ticino, is one of the highlights of this collaboration and has seen two editions already in 2018 and 2019.
LAC edu

IBSA Foundation, with the online portal Ticino Scienza, and LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, through the cultural space LAC edu, kick off a new collaboration. 

 

"Lingua Madre - capsule per il futuro" is a project born from the urgency of the present time. With a very innovative content, it covers three macro thematic areas: Body, Language and Rite. Within the vast programme is a cycle of four conferences to address the problem of language from different points of view. 

The conferences are organised by LAC edu in collaboration with Ticino Scienza. They will be recorded and broadcasted online from the end of March until the last days of May 2021
MASI - Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana

The successful cycle of conversations “La Scienza a regola d’Arte”, which started in 2017, continues and, as of 2021, the partnership with the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI Lugano) strengthens. IBSA Foundation is now the exclusive Scientific Partner of the Museum for all exhibitions held at MASI and Palazzo Reali in Lugano.

IBSA Foundation has always believed that science deserves to be identified as a culture and, as such, to belong to the world of humanistic disciplines: in this sense, the encounter between science and art is not only possible, but natural.
Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologie Leonardo da Vinci

Since 2019 IBSA Foundation is partner of Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci in Milan. The collaboration has been established in the year that celebrated 500 years from the death of Leonardo da Vinci.

Encouraged by the common commitment in promoting the dialogue between scientific and humanistic disciplines, together with the passion for scientific dissemination,  IBSA Foundation is the Scientific Partner of the Museum.

This partnership is developing through a series of activities that will be better described in the Activities section of this website: find out the details of the last initiative organised in 2020, #storieaportechiuse.

IBSA Foundation is the first partner to join the Mission Partnership program, created in 2021 to support the cultural and educational activities of the museum. In addition, the IBSA Foundation will be collaborating on the Future Inventors project:  two interactive digital installations by two international artists that will be housed in the museum (autumn 2021).
MUSE - Science Museum

IBSA Foundation has chosen to support MUSE – Science Museum by Renzo Piano in Trento with a two-year Partnership.
MUSE is one of the most important science museums in Europe with almost 500,000 visitors per year and a unique example of scientific dissemination and cultural promotion, collaborating with more than 200 institutes and universities worldwide.

This partnership is developing through a series of activities that will be held throughout the year, more details on which can be found in the Projects section of this website: find out the details of the last initiative organised in 2020, MUSE per #iorestoacasa.
Scuola Romana dei Fumetti & Carocci Editore For a number of years now, IBSA Foundation has worked with Rome-based comic strip school Scuola Romana dei Fumetti and Carocci Editore publishing, as part of the Let’s Science! project. Offering a creative journey into the sciences, it is designed and promoted to be used as a means of raising scientific awareness aimed chiefly at secondary school pupils.
USI - L’ideatorio

Since 2016, IBSA Foundation has supported the work of “L’ideatorio” - the service for promoting scientific culture and dialogue between science and society run by Università della Svizzera italiana.  L’ideatorio is the regional antenna of the Science et Cité Foundation. It is a centre of competence for the Swiss Academies of the Sciences, and also works in conjunction with the education department of the City of Lugano. 

The aim of L’ideatorio is to ensure science and its societal challenges are made accessible and transparent to as many people as possible, encouraging responsible, critical dialogue on scientific and technological progress.
USI - Università della Svizzera italiana Since 2017, the IBSA Foundation has set up annual renewable scholarships as a contribution to encourage academic studies in medicine. The scholarships are intended for students enrolled in Bachelor's and Master's programmes in the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI Lugano).