Rector E.Gaudio mandate's as 1st President of the CIVIS European University alliance ends

Prof. Eugenio Gaudio, Rector of Sapienza University of Rome, terminates his mandate as 1st President of the CIVIS alliance. As the rector of one of the eight-member universities, Rector E.Gaudio will remain a fundamental player in pursuing the development of the CIVIS initiative as a member of the Board of Rectors.

Today, Tuesday 31st March 2020, we celebrate the end of Professor Eugenio Gaudio's mandate as President of the CIVIS alliance. Rector E. Gaudio served his term from 1st October 2019 to 31st March 2020 as the first president of the CIVIS European University Alliance. During his presidency, Rector E.Gaudio endeavoured the mission to successfully launch our European University Alliance and positioned CIVIS as a strong actor in transforming the Higher Education area and pioneering the European University initiative.

His inspirational speech which he gave during the official kick-off meeting of the CIVIS alliance in November 2019 will be remembered among us in forging the path in building the university of the future.

It is time to remember the founding concepts of Europe and implement – twenty years after its signature – the main principles stated and shared with profound certainty by the Bologna Process, which reorganized the European university system to promote the development of an integrated European space for higher education, based on academic freedom, institutional independence, the participation of students and professors in the governance of higher education, social cohesion, the free circulation of students and professors, the development of a social dimension for higher education, a wider aperture and collaboration with higher education systems from around the world. And this is the ambition of CIVIS. Its challenge is that of Europe, too. And its future, which is in our hands, must be bequeathed to the new generations to dissipate the legitimate and comprehensible preoccupation that the new generations do not believe in Europe; on the contrary, we are certain that they are already fully European.

Under his watch, key milestones have been reached notably the implementation of a university umbrella Erasmus agreements signed by the eight-member universities which will allow students, academics, researchers and admin staff to study, work, and share their knowledge & experience as freely as in their institutions of origin.

Rector E.Gaudio full speech can be downloaded at the end of the article. 

Portrait of Eugenio Gaudio, Rector of Sapienza University of Rome

Eugenio Gaudio was born in Cosenza on September 15, 1956. He graduated in Medicine at Sapienza University in 1980. After teaching at the University of L’Aquila in 1987, he returned to Sapienza in 2000 as a Professor of Human Anatomy and began coordinating the PhD programme in Experimental and Clinical Hepatology (now Experimental and Clinical Hepato-Gastroenterology).

Since 2011, Gaudio has coordinated the degree programme of the International Medical School. From 2008 to 2010 he was also Director of the Department of Human anatomy. Since 2010, Gaudio has been President of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Medicine and President of the Permanent Conference of Italian Faculties and Schools of Medicine and Surgery.

Professor Gaudio is the author of over 450 scientific publications and 12 published volumes (H impact index of 35). He is also included in the list of Top Italian Scientists - My Google Scholar Citations with over 4300 citations and a total impact factor: > 700 (JCR Science Edition 2012).

Gaudio’s scientific research has been developed through the organization and direction of inter-university and international research teams and in major PRIN, FIRB, CIPE and NIH projects. He has collaborated with major international research centres, including the Texas A&M University Research Unit (USA) and the UNC School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (USA).

Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences of Bologna, he is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and an Honorary Professor at the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry. Moreover, Gaudio has received a Gold Medal for “Public Health Services” and the title of Commendatore dell’Ordine of the Italian Republic.

On November 1, 2019, at the Wuhan Zhongnan University of Economics and Law presented Professor Gaudio with the prestigious Honorary Doctoral Degree in Economics and Law of the People’s Republic of China.