Dompé Foundation

Established in 2020 by Sergio Dompé, the Dompé Foundation is committed to supporting the university education of talented young individuals in STEM fields, ultimately contributing to the advancement of scientific knowledge and the exploration of new research areas, particularly in the life sciences. More specifically, it aims at breaking down financial barriers to higher education for aspiring scientists and researchers who possess talent and determination but lack the necessary economic resources to pursue undergraduate or postgraduate studies in STEM disciplines. Innovation, emerging technologies, and a multidisciplinary approach are the core pillars of the study and research programs handpicked by the Dompé Foundation for its scholarship program.

This selection is driven by the awareness that life sciences require an increasingly interdisciplinary methodology, as scientific discoveries are more and more the result of the interaction between different disciplines. Today, the knowledge base required for the training of researchers and scientists extends far beyond medicine, physics, or chemistry – it must also encompass fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, data science, and nanotechnology.

Launched in 2020 with five calls for applications across six universities in Italy, in 2021 the Dompé Foundation landed in the United States with a scholarship program named after Rita Levi-Montalcini, the only female Italian Nobel laureate in Medicine. This initiative is open to students of any nationality who have been admitted to a master’s, PhD, or postdoctoral program in neuroscience or neurobiology at a US university. In its first five years, the Foundation has awarded over 130 scholarships to students from 26 different universities across Italy and the United States.