Vannini Sara (PhD student)
Sara graduated in 2006 in Foreign Languages and Literature at the University of Bologna, Italy, with a dissertation focused on the rescue of of the Mapuche aboriginal culture, in collaboration with the Universidad Católica de Temuco, Chile.
She has therefore accrued almost three years of experience working in the Internet field and developed a great interest in online communication, participative web and e-learning.
Since January 2010 she is part of the NewMinE Lab. She is currently working on the project Picture.
Contact Sara at:
tel.: +41 58 666 45 47
e-mail: sara.vannini [at] usi.ch
View Sara’s full profile at her personal website.
View Sara’s profile on LinkedIn.
TREE – Teaching and research in engineering in Europe (UE, LLL)
Project owner: Lorenzo Cantoni
Period: October 2004 to September 2007
Contributing to the development and the enrichment of the European dimension in Engineering Education (EE) constitutes the global goal of TREE. In other words to enhance the compatibility of the many diverse routes to the status of Professional Engineer which exist in Europe and, hence, to facilitate greater mobility of skilled personnel and integration of the various situations throughout Europe. It must be emphasised that, according to the spirit of the Bologna Declaration, enhanced compatibility does not imply uniformity, and is certainly not intended to lead to a reduction of standards to the best common level that can be found. This was also the goal of the two TNPs (acronym for Thematic Network Project) dedicated in the recent past to EE in general: H3E (supported under Socrates I) and E4 (supported under Socrates II). The activities of these TNPs constitute the “roots” of TREE. It is then natural to assess first the contribution of these previous experiences to the global goal, giving for granted that, because of the continuous evolution of higher education in Europe, it would be naïve to consider such a goal as already reached. Looking in particular at E4, the box of volumes (one for each Activity plus two general ones and a CD-rom) collecting the results of the three years of activity of this TNP is providing evidence of many areas in which TNPs can contribute to the development of the European dimension in higher education: networking, tuning, life-long learning, use of ICTs, quality assessment and assurance, are some of the areas which come to mind. It is believed that a new TNP in EE in order to be successful must blend study activities, forum organisation and pioneering exercises, keeping as a main target the production of all sort of TOOLS for enhancing the European dimension. In fact, as important as reports/studies on the various key topics mentioned above, as developed during E4, may be, it is widely believed that an activity focused more on well identifiable projects/initiatives would be welcomed. The activity of TREE will be developed along four main lines: A. the tuning line (new curricula for the two-tier structure of higher education, tools for quality assessment and assurance, accreditation, extension of ECTS); B. the education and research line (status and promotion of doctoral studies, role of research activity in EE, value of research oriented project work); C. the attractiveness of EE line (for young people, especially women, for extra-EU students, by special initiatives such as joint/double degrees); D. the sustainability line (sustain EE institutions by, e.g. developing continuing education, and/or open and distant learning opportunities, but also study ways to make valuable tools, identified during the TN, self-sustainable).
HOSPITALITAS (EU, Interreg)
Project owner: Stefano Tardini
Project staff: Lara Bachmann, Ilaria Bernardi Zucca
Period: January 2003 to December 2005
Funding agency: Programma Interreg III A 2000-2006
Partners: Institute of Communication and Education of the University of Lugano, Istituto Regionale lombardo di Formazione per l´amministrazione pubblica.
Further Swiss partners are the Scuola superiore per le formazioni sanitarie, and the Centro Documentazione e Ricerca dell´OSC; further Italian partners are Azienda ospedaliera S. Anna in Como, and the Azienda ospedaliera Macchi in Varese.
HOSPITALITAS – Healthcare Online Shared Platform for Increasing Tessin And Lombardy Immigrants´ Treatment and ASsistance – is a project funded by the Programma Interreg III A 2000-2006.
The purpose of the project is to develop an online platform for the continuing education towards healthcare assistance to patients immigrated from developing countries. The platform is therefore addressed to the healthcare personal working in the cross-border areas of Tessin and Lombardy. The project will develop online courses dealing with biometrical, epidemiological and therapeutical issues, linguistic issues concerning the interaction doctor-patient, issues concerning the psychology of communication, medical anthropology and intercultural communication, demographic issues, legal issues.
GRAPPLE (UE, FP7)
Project owner: Riccardo Mazza
Project staff: Luca Mazzola
Period: February 2008 – January 2011
Funding agency: European Commission, 7th FP
Website: http://www.grapple-project.org
GRAPPLE is an EU FP7 STREP Project. GRAPPLE stands for “Generic Responsive Adaptive Personalized Learning Environment”.The GRAPPLE project aims at delivering to learners a technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environment that guides them through a life-long learning experience, automatically adapting to personal preferences, prior knowledge, skills and competences, learning goals and the personal or social context in which the learning takes place.
The same TEL environment can be used/accessed at home, school, work or on the move (using mobile/handheld devices).
Mazzola Luca (PhD student)
Luca holds an Italian Master’s degree in Engineering in Computer Science from Politechnic University of Milan. His research at the NewMinE Lab focuses on adaptive contents for eLearning, inside the GRAPPLE project. He aims to help people involved in Life Long Learning to reach their objectives: this could be achieved using visualization techniques to present them relevant information able to stress their self-reflection processes. Luca is a member of the Red-Ink Doctoral School and member of Institute for Technologies of Communication (ITC).
He is also teacher of ‘Fundamentals of Biomedical Informatics’ at the BioMedical Informatics & eHealth lab at Politechnic University of Milan.
In the past, he has worked as a freelancing software engineer, as a research associate at CILEA, and most recently as a teacher assistant at PoliMi.
Luca is working on Life Long Learning, adaptive hypermedia, Human Computer Interaction, Information Visualization
Download CV
Contact Luca at
Tel: +41 (0)58 666 46 74
Fax: +41 (0)58 666 46 47
Mobile (personal): +41 77 44 57 526
Mail: luca.mazzola@lu.unisi.ch
View Luca’s page at USI
View Luca’s profile on LinkedIn
View Luca’s profile on Red-Ink site
Skype: mazzolaluca
