SCUOLA SUPERIORE EUROPEA DI MEDICINA MOLECOLARE FONDAZIONI

Their core work

SEMM is a European graduate school based in Milan dedicated to PhD-level education in molecular medicine and biomedical sciences. Their H2020 participation reflects their core institutional mission: designing and delivering structured training programs that equip early-career biomedical researchers with both scientific and professional competencies. In practice, they contribute expertise in curriculum design for PhD training, career development workshops, scientific symposia organization, and the integration of open science and entrepreneurship skills into biomedical education. They are not a laboratory research group — their value is in researcher development and training programme architecture.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the first phase (ENABLE, 2016–2021), SEMM contributed to building a European platform for young biomedical researchers centred around scientific symposia and informal careers workshops — event-based engagement rather than structured programmes. By the second project (ENABLECARES, 2021–2023), the focus had clearly shifted toward formal, competency-based curriculum: PhD skills training, transferable skills, career development, and the addition of open science and entrepreneurship as explicit training objectives. The trend is a deliberate move from convening researchers to systematically equipping them for diverse career paths beyond academia.

SEMM is evolving from event organiser toward a recognised training authority for biomedical PhD students, with growing emphasis on open science literacy and academic-to-industry career transitions — a profile that fits well into Horizon Europe's skills and researcher mobility priorities.

How they like to work

SEMM has participated exclusively as a partner across both projects — never as coordinator — suggesting they contribute as a specialist node rather than driving consortium strategy. Their network is small and tight: five unique partners across three countries, and both projects belong to the same ENABLE project family, indicating they build within established, trusted relationships rather than seeking broad new alliances. For a prospective partner, this means reliable specialist input in researcher training, but limited experience managing project-level responsibilities.

SEMM has collaborated with five unique partners across three countries — a notably small footprint for six years of H2020 participation. Both projects appear to be within the same collaborative family, suggesting a concentrated and recurring partnership rather than a wide-ranging network.

What sets them apart

SEMM occupies a rare institutional niche: a dedicated European graduate school for molecular medicine, meaning their expertise in PhD training is not a side activity but their entire raison d'être. Unlike general universities that run researcher training as a support function, SEMM has built its identity around producing career-ready biomedical scientists — making them a credible and focused partner for any project addressing researcher skills, career transitions, or open science capacity building in the life sciences. Their location within Milan's dense biomedical research cluster (home to major IRCCS institutes and pharmaceutical industry) adds practical industry-proximity to their academic profile.

Highlights from their portfolio

• ENABLE
  The longer and better-funded project (EUR 121,912 over five years), ENABLE established SEMM's role in a European-scale platform for biomedical science career development through the European Academy for Biomedical Science.
• ENABLECARES
  A focused follow-on project that moved SEMM's contribution from event organisation toward structured skills training, adding open science and entrepreneurship as formal curriculum components for junior biomedical researchers.