Università Cattolica

UniCat is Europe’s largest non-state university, working as a not-for-profit institution, where all revenues are invested in teaching, research and other activities including the support of low-income students. Although it is a non-state university, UniCat operates in full compliance with all the rules and regulations of Italian university legislation and it is subject to accreditation by ANVUR, the Italian Agency for the evaluation of university and research. UniCat hosts 12 faculties, involving more than 40,000 students (of whom 27,000 are FTE) and a teaching staff of over 7,600 of whom 1,283 are permanent professors and researchers. Moreover, 260-research fellows and 493 PhD students undertake research activities.

UniCat has a strong long- term experience in research projects funded within EU and national granting schemes, with more than 100 grants in FP7, H2020, JPI, LIFE, PRIMA, National and Regional projects. In particular, UniCat has received funding from competitive calls related to the area of partnership for a total of approximately € 8.2 million in the last five years.

UniCat brings together a strong interdisciplinary team involving researchers from several different and complementary areas of food research, e.g., chemists, biochemists, microbiologists, food technologists, food engineers, nutritionists, consumers’ psychologists and agri-food economists and ensuring the interdisciplinary and holistic approach. The successful participation of UniCat to a vast number of competitive funded projects and in research activities with private institutions demonstrates the capacity of the UniCat’s team to face off problems evolving during the development of research activities, through proactive strategy to help deal with any kind of disruptive event, positive or negative.

Nonetheless, joint publications in high-quality scientific journals, staff and Ph.D. exchange or research collaborations with all the most relevant international universities being involved in food science research topics are additional proofs of the international collaboration from UniCat. UniCat has been working with EFSA since its institution in 2003, with academics acting as scientific experts in Panels and Working Groups and collaborating in research activities as an Art. 36 listed institutions. Thus, UniCat researchers are co-authors of more than 700 Scientific Opinions published in EFSA Journal (Online ISSN:1831-4732).