Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema of Italy will support the establishment of an MIT Italy Program to be funded by the Italian government and industry through the USA-Italy Council, President Charles M. Vest announced following an early morning meeting with the prime minister.
The MIT Italy Program is an innovative collaboration with Italian private and public partners to advance education and research in areas of common interest to the United States and Italy, a major center of innovation in industry, technology and science, and a country with which MIT faculty and students have unique opportunities to learn and create new knowledge.
The program will provide three major components: opportunities for MIT students to engage in long-term internships at premier Italian research and corporate institutions; education in Italian language, history and culture; and seed funding for MIT and Italian researchers for workshops and other collaborative research projects.
The MIT Italy Program, to be directed by Professor Richard Locke of the Sloan School and Department of Political Science, is the fifth major project of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI). To date, the MIT Japan, China, Germany and India Programs have educated and supported internships abroad for nearly 800 MIT students. The programs have been widely praised as models for the international education of the next generation of America's scientific and technological elite.
A version of this article appeared in the March 10, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 22).
