Scuola Sant'Anna Pisa
An Italian public university with a long experience in promoting higher education and research through a multidisciplinary approach.
We were ranked 3rd in the world (Times Higher Education ranking) among small universities.
The Institute of Life Sciences is one of the 6 Institutes of the SSSA.
It is composed of 5 thematic laboratories (Medical Science Lab, BioLabs, Plant Lab, Agrobiodiversity Lab, and Land Lab), and has 10 professors, 11 assistant professors, 10 technicians, and 5 administrative personnel. SSSA hosts 34 researchers and post-docs. The Institute offers 3 PhD courses (Agrobiodiversity, Agrobiosciences, and Medical Sciences), and a total of 15 grants each year. It has a research portfolio worth about 1,4M €. Research of the Land Lab and BioLab is focused on the study and development of sustainable cropping systems in general. ​ ​ IN FRAMEWORK ​ ​ SSSA will provide a study on biodiversity management aimed at pest control and conservation in Tuscan olive groves. The entomologist in our team has a 15-year old network with local farmers and the entomological team has provided an excellent case study performed in this region in the Quessa project. Results of the Quessa project clearly show that conversation biological control especially in organic olive groves has good potential. Therefore, this team is a perfect contributor to FRAMEwork as they can now start to collaborate with farmers in a farm cluster to involve a high number of local farmers in biodiversity-friendly olive grove management. The team will work with Aedit (developed app for olive growers) and Sportello Agroecologico Calci (objective is to involve citizens in sustaining the local olive and mountain agroecosystem). ​ The Agroecology team of SSSA has 15 years of experience in developing ideas on functional agrobiodiversity management and applied research on relations between management, plant community composition ecosystem service delivery such as soil fertility, pollination and biological pest control. The team is focussing on functional approaches to target vegetation management to optimise ecosystem service provisioning. ​ SSSA will support where necessary and as foreseen in the project. The team is part of all relevant organisations in Europe related to Agroecology and Organic Farming. It will team up with all these organisations and their channels can be used to promote results for the project.