PALERMO. Students from the university campus in Viale delle Scienze took technology and turned it into a real-world experience. Through five original videos, produced with the guidance of science communicator and TEDx speaker Elvis Tusha, they enthusiastically presented the use cases of the European project “5G 4 A Smart Sicilian Academic Campus” (5G4ASSAC), showing how the new network is revolutionizing teaching, research and clinical practices.
The protagonists of this story were students from various university degree programs, including students of Medicine and Surgery, Medicine and Surgery with a technological focus (MedIT), Design and Educational Sciences, as well as PhD students in Biomedicine, Neuroscience and Advanced Diagnostics and in Health Promotion and Cognitive Sciences. With curiosity and passion, they transformed their everyday experiences into visual stories, showing how 5G tangibly improves their study paths and future professional prospects.
In enhanced laboratories equipped with XR devices, students were able to design objects and advanced models in the anatomical, histological and neurophysiology fields, refining their skills, while students of the General Education and Laboratory course used immersive applications to make the study of behaviors more realistic. Other students described the surprise of seeing the results of their virtual experiments in real time, making each lesson more concrete, engaging and memorable. Each video offered a window into their daily lives transformed by 5G, clearly and emotionally illustrating how technology becomes a tool for learning and innovation.
The day also marked a technical and symbolic milestone: the hybrid private 5G network is now active, and new use cases are ready to turn the entire campus into a laboratory of innovation. The new hybrid 5G MPN network is operational not only at the university campus in Viale delle Scienze, but also at the Mathematics and Computer Science campus in Via Archirafi, the University Territorial Campus of Trapani and the Paolo Giaccone University Hospital. This achievement crowns a journey that places the University of Palermo among the pioneers of 5G campuses in Italy, thanks to the project launched in collaboration with Fastweb + Vodafone.
“The 5G4ASSAC project represents an extraordinary opportunity for our University: it is not just about technology, but about a new vision for education, research and healthcare services. Our students,” emphasized the Rector of the University of Palermo, Massimo Midiri, “are not mere users of the network, but true protagonists of innovation. 5G thus becomes a concrete tool to transform ideas into experiences, knowledge into skills, and our campus into a laboratory open to the future. Today’s event marks not only the end of a project journey, but above all the beginning of a new phase of development, in which 5G emerges as a strategic enabler of advanced digital ecosystems capable of generating value for the University, for the healthcare system and for the entire Sicilian community.”
“The project carried out with the University of Palermo represents a significant example of how 5G MPN networks can concretely help revolutionize advanced education, especially in the medical field,” said Max Gasparroni, Chief Technology & Security Officer of Fastweb + Vodafone. “When companies, universities and institutions work together, a context emerges that can generate solutions with a tangible impact on local communities and spillover effects across all sectors. Integrating technology into educational processes not only expands learning opportunities, but also promotes creativity, collaboration and the development of the skills needed to face future challenges.”
The event, hosted in the Capitò Lecture Hall of the Department of Engineering, represented a moment of feedback and sharing of the results achieved during the project, which was scientifically coordinated under the guidance of Professor Salvatore Vitabile. During the final day, the main use cases already active and those in an advanced stage of implementation were presented, ranging from immersive learning environments to Artificial Intelligence-based research platforms supporting early diagnosis, and telemedicine applications.
Thanks to the hybrid private 5G network, characterized by extremely high transmission speeds, ultra-low latency and high levels of security, more than one hundred students are already experimenting with new learning models based on the integration of the physical and digital worlds, following a “learning by doing” approach.
The 5G4ASSAC project, with a total value of €6.5 million, is funded by the European Connecting Europe Facility program with a contribution of €4 million, and is supported by the Italian Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy and the Sicilian Regional Government.
With the conclusion of the project, the University of Palermo establishes itself as one of the first 5G smart campuses in Europe, confirming its vocation to be a laboratory of innovation open to the territory and a national point of reference for the integration of advanced digital infrastructures, university education, scientific research and healthcare services.