#WeAreOpen: Opening of Bocconi's Urban Campus and Academic Year

«We are open» was the motto of the Opening Ceremony of the Academic Year this morning at Bocconi. In the presence of the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, the President of the Lombardy Region, Attilio Fontana, the Bocconi's Rector, Gianmario Verona, and Managing Director, Riccardo Taranto, the President of the University, Mario Monti, and the Mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, the new Bocconi urban campus complex in the former Centrale del Latte area was inaugurated.

The 2019-2020 academic year at Bocconi is one of significant expansion. It is open to the 14,952 students with 99 nationalities who are in undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as the 12,144 executives from 75 countries who have attended the SDA Bocconi School of Management, the post-experience business school. 60% of courses are in English and they are attended by 38% international students, on average. One year after graduation, 95.2% of graduates are employed. And of these, 27.5% are working abroad.

The faculty boasts 365 professors (31.5% women and 19.2% non-Italians), whose excellence also in the field of research is recognized by their success rate in obtaining competitive funding from the European Research Council (the University leads in Italy with 35 grants hosted). In the QS ranking, Bocconi is fourth in Europe and sixteenth in the world in Social Sciences and Management. In addition, SDA Bocconi School of Management has received the EQUIS Accreditation for another five years, thus entering into the small group of business schools around the world to have obtained full accreditation five times in a row. It also confirmed its belonging to the small group of world-class business schools (currently only 90 out of more than 10,000 schools) - and the only one in Italy - holding the coveted triple AACSB-EQUIS-AMBA accreditation.

With today's inauguration, the University's urban campus now covers 90,000 square meters of land, including the 35,000 square meters of the former Centrale del Latte area (for a total of 350,000 square meters of floor space, 84,000 of which is in the new area). The buildings on the new campus, with sinuous lines and characterized by transparencies that enhance the concept of openness, were designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa's Sanaa architectural firm in Japan. The construction includes a student residence that opened in August 2018, and a 17,000-square-meter green area that will be open to the public in daytime hours starting next January. The multi-purpose sports center will also be open to the public, operational starting in the next academic year. It will have two swimming pools (one of which is a 50-meter Olympic-size pool), a fitness area, a sports arena with a basketball/volleyball court and an indoor running track. On the new campus, SDA Bocconi brings together all its activities in a single, ultra-modern complex, made up of four buildings. They are at the forefront in terms of sustainability, guaranteeing energy self-sufficiency on an annual basis, the absence of harmful emissions, and heat pumps and cooling units powered by water without physical water consumption. Building roofs are equipped with high-efficiency photovoltaic panels, which produce over 1,200 kW of nominal power.

An opening to the complexity of reality, to the challenges of artificial intelligence and innovation, to scientific research and to the city was also the theme of Rector Gianmario Verona's speech. «In 2019, the world has realized that the complexity characterizing the contemporary period cannot be trivialized and that with increasing complexity, coherent and equally complex solutions must be provided».

In addition to the metaphorical openings announced by the Rector, there are also two concrete openings that are just as important. With the 2020-2021 academic year, Bocconi is launching the new Bachelor of Science in Mathematical and Computing Sciences for Artificial Intelligence. This three-year degree taught in English aims to train a new type of graduate with a rigorous, innovative and methodological background without barriers in terms of subject matter, who can understand how and why the best tools of artificial intelligence work, and create new ones. The program features the three pillars of mathematical, modelling (physics and economics) and computational methods in parallel, to converge in increasingly sophisticated simulations and data-driven artificial intelligence courses, integrating and putting into practice the knowledge acquired.

Bocconi for Innovation (B4i) is also opening, a new platform that will have the triple role of a pre-accelerator, business accelerator and a place for the development of corporate entrepreneurship. As an accelerator, B4i will host up to 30 startups per year. To find the first 10 companies to be developed, the first Bocconi for Innovation Startup Call, already underway, will close on 6 January 2020. Once selected, on the basis of the innovation of the business idea and the quality of the business model, projects will receive financial support of €30,000 and will be admitted to a free four-month acceleration path. The platform aims to promote the right matching between Bocconi's managerial and business knowledge and the technical skills that come from partners such as the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Politecnico di Milano, Università degli studi di Milano, Citi Foundation and HenkelX.

Lastly, the idea of openness is featured in a citywide event. From today until Wednesday four interactive doors are available in four points of the city (Piazza Gae Aulenti, City Life, Via Torino and the entrance of Bocconi at Via Roentgen). By opening these doors, passers-by can see the screen within, enter the Bocconi world through a series of videos and put themselves to the test with quizzes about the University. These same doors also broadcast a livestream of the Opening Ceremony of the Academic Year.


PRESS KIT:

New Bocconi Campus, a Project That Improves the Urban Landscape

With a New Bachelor, Bocconi Teaches the Methodology Behind Artificial Intelligence

Business Acceleration Has a New Name: Bocconi for Innovation

Rector's Address

FACT SHEET: The New Bocconi Campus in Numbers

FACT SHEET: SANAA

FACT SHEET: The Other Designers Who Built Bocconi

Download the new campus photo gallery