Michele Giurato and Tiziano Tasini are the first to graduate with a Master's degree in Environmental Meteorology from the Universities of Trento and Innsbruck. A well-deserved achievement for an innovative degree programme in which the University has invested in recent years. The graduation ceremony took place online days ago, in compliance with Covid-19 safety measures. The satisfaction of the two recent graduates, however, was far from virtual.
After all, the international double degree programme, launched in 2018, is a unique experience that has what it takes to open the doors to the world of work in the meteorology sector, but also in many other areas that have to deal, for example, with the environment, tourism, sustainability, safety.
The course is jointly offered by the universities of Trento and Innsbruck. At UniTrento, the academic departments involved are the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Department of Physics, and the Agriculture Food Environment Center (C3A), which collaborates closely with Fondazione Edmund Mach. Over the years, the number of students taking the admission tests and enrolling in the programme has increased constantly.
Students attend the first year of the two-year programme in Trento, and the first semester of the second year in Innsbruck. In the second semester they start working on their thesis, in Trento, Innsbruck or elsewhere. All courses are taught in English, and students are required to write their master's thesis in English.
"The graduation of the first students is a source of great satisfaction for us", explains Dino Zardi, programme coordinator. The programme of study fills a historical void in education in our country, where there weren't any university options in meteorology before this one. The programme provides students with skills in meteorology (use of instrumentation for atmospheric measurements, data processing and analysis, use of models and formulation of forecasts) and knowledge in environmental systems and processes: monitoring and forecasting of the various components of the water cycle, air quality monitoring and management, services for agriculture, evaluation and management of renewable energy resources.
Michele Giurato, with a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Milan, has written his master's thesis in collaboration with Milan-based Epson Meteo on improving the performance of a meteorological model to forecast storms. In his future, he could be employed by the company for which he carried out his thesis.
Tiziano Tasini, with a bachelor's degree in environmental engineering from the University of Trento, focused his thesis on late frosts, analyzing data collected in the measurement campaigns of the GePri (Gelate Primaverili, spring frosts) project, carried out at the Maso delle Part experimental farm, which belongs to Fondazione Edmund Mach. His goal is now to find a job where he can put to use the skills he acquired in the field of meteorology or even devote himself to teaching science subjects.