School and work get closer and closer with the first experience of company insertion at CMCC Foundation premises in the framework of the “alternanza scuola-lavoro” project: some students from high schools “G. Banzi Bazoli” and “Cosimo De Giorgi” (Lecce, Italy) took part in CMCC activities for two weeks while experiencing cutting edge research and technologies at the forefront.

The “alternanza scuola-lavoro”, a mandatory activity at the center of the Italian reform of Education, is the new way to connect school and work; it consists in doing a training program in a company, such a public or private businesses , no-profit organizations, etc: approximately 200 hours to be spent in an organization available to host an internship program.

The CMCC Foundation is a non-profit research institution focused on climate sciences, an institution able to draw resources and skilled researchers from all over the world while wanting to be a concrete opportunity of growth for young people from the Apulia region.

The students started a training program with high profile tutors getting in contact with the research of their region and doing activities very different from the ones usually realized at school. They engaged with CMCC staff dealing with several activities, i.e. in-depth analyses and elaboration of oceanographic data, the validation of an oceanographic model, the visualization of an oceanographic data on a 3D globe (WebGLEarth), the realization of weather marine forecasts bulletins while using SeaConditions portal, designing and planning of websites, science communication, programming, data analysis and processing.

The activities of the “alternanza scuola-lavoro” project – to be continued on September 2016 and February 2017 – took place at Ocean-Lab and Communication Office premises, in the historic center of Lecce, and at the Supercomputing Center located inside the Campus “Ecotekne” in Lecce, CMCC’s technological core hosting one of the most powerful supercomputer dedicated to the study of climate change.