Centre

Mission and principles

The Alma Mater Research Institute on Global Challenges and Climate Change (Alma Climate) is an interdisciplinary hub created by the University of Bologna to foster interdisciplinary research addressing the multifaceted issues posed by the impact of antropic activities onto our planet and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals spelled out in the UN 2030 Agenda and the implementation of the Paris Agreement, whose early operational requirements have been singled out at IPCC’s COP24 in Katowice. This task will be pursued through the joint effort of hundreds of researchers working in 26 Departments of the University of Bologna, so as to reinforce the international position of the Alma Mater in the international debate about climate change in terms of research, education, innovation and societal impact.

Its activities will be steered by a few essential principles:

• excellence of research output;
• aggregation of different competences for an holistic approach to climate change;
• international reputation and scope;
• wide impact at regional, national and international levels;
• promotion of recruitment of outstanding quality;
• ongoing interaction with the civil society and partnerships with public and private entities. 

Why a climate research Institute at the University of Bologna?

Creating the Institute has been a strategic but natural choice for a large and generalist university like the Alma Mater. This decision has paved the way along which many colleagues, looking at the manifold problems posed by climate change from different angles, may succeed in producing a unified multidisciplinary view of it and therefore also provide effective and consistent answers to the uncountably many questions arising from it.

And there is more that justifies this choice. To begin with, Bologna hosts 70% of supercomputing power in Italy, at INFN and CINECA, the latter being the largest Italian computing Institute and one of the most relevant worldwide. Moreover, the ECMWF (European Institute for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) is going to move from Reading (UK) to Bologna in 2020. To complete the picture, the social, institutional and industrial texture of the region features a strong awareness of environmental problems and building up Alma Climate the University of Bologna is also responding positively to a demand expressed by the industry, civil community and public authorities.