The Università del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro” – UPO (https://www.uniupo.it/en), is a public Italian University established in 1998. It has 7 Departments and one School of Medicine, 12.000 students approximately, 400 teachers/researchers, 350 members of technical and administrative staff, about 130 PhD students and 100 post-doc positions. The University offers a full range of academic disciplines (Economics, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Law and Political Science, Social Science, Medicine and Surgery, Natural Sciences, Humanities) to embrace a large number of activities: basic and representative courses, laboratories, apprenticeships, training periods and international exchanges.

The research activities are funded by both private and public institutions, either local or national and international. High standard research and education represent the mission of the University and its Board pays great attention on it, promoting and supporting researchers in project implementation and facilitating the infrastructural needs of researchers. UPO is partner of several European research and education programmes; it has been involved in 21 FP7 Projects (1 ERC grants) and 15 H2020 Projects (4 as Coordinator).

The UPO crucial aim is to strengthen the integration of the community in national and international networks by promoting scientific and cultural exchanges. To this respect, the mobility of students and researchers is widely supported. UPO has been acknowledged as a competent partner of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Union body for risk assessment regarding food safety. UPO have also established a significant number of international relationships with European and non-European universities: currently there are nearby 30 agreements for research activities and exchanges and about 100 Erasmus agreements for student exchanges. UPO encourage inter-university cooperation to develop jointly operated/tutored doctorate course. Actually, there are 9 agreements for joint programmes with European universities that involve all cycles of studies (Bachelor and Master Degrees, PhD courses).

UPO has recently established the new Center of Excellence for Translational Research on Autoimmune and Allergic Diseases (CAAD, http://caad.uniupo.it/) with new wide labs spaces, equipped with cutting edge facilities and where the Scientists involved in the present project are affiliated.