The Third Edition of Funds TOgether, UniTo’s Crowdfunding Initiative, Is Underway

The 2024 edition of Funds TOgether, the initiative developed by the University of Turin to support the University’s research and innovation projects through crowdfunding, officially kicked off during the European Researchers’ Night. In the past two editions, more than 1,300 donors supported research for 8 selected projects (5 in the 2023 edition and 3 in the 2021 pilot edition).

All projects of Funds TOgether reached and exceeded their goals, raising a total of over 160,000 euros, with an average overfunding of 325%

Also for this third edition of Funds TOgether five projects have been chosen (GaIA – Let’s manage Artificial Intelligence in a conscious and creative way, BRIGHT: Brain Research in Interactive Game-based HyperTraining, Citizen Salad – The invisible life on salad leaves, Towards the Virtual and Beyond: a safe social space for autism, CultMeat – for a more sustainable future) designed by researchers from UniTo.

The selection for the Funds TOgether initiative was made thanks to the collaboration of Ginger Crowdfunding, which manages ideaginger.it, the technological crowdfunding platform on which the projects are uploaded, taking into consideration a series of evaluation indicators, from project coherence to communication, up to creativity in choosing rewards for donors.

Each campaign has a concrete result to achieve and a specific budget to collect, no more than 10,000 euros. The research groups will receive the funding collected through crowdfunding only if they manage to achieve the set budget objective and the University of Turin, as in previous editions, will double the funding of the projects that reach the finish line.

Funds TOgether is the alternative finance program for research and innovation of UniTo, implemented through the crowdfunding technique

Funds TOgether represents a valid alternative to finance projects with a strong social and environmental impact thanks to the involvement of different and numerous subjects.

The goal is to support interdisciplinary projects, both by guaranteeing the acquisition of additional funds and by promoting greaterbrand visibilityof the University, understood as amplified legitimacy, increased awareness of the importance of research and of the social and economic role of the University.

Crowdfunding is an opportunity for research teams to access new economic resources, disseminate their work and meet new supporters and partners. Not only that: it is also an opportunity to consolidate skills in project management, fundraising and communication.

Research projects part of the Funds TOgether initiative

GaIA – We manage Artificial Intelligence consciously and creatively

The goal of the campaign is to educate boys and girls to a conscious and creative management of Artificial Intelligence. The training course, aimed at boys and girls from 3 primary schools in the outskirts of Turin, takes place at the LIFE Laboratory of the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences and offers immersive virtual experiences and educational robotics.

With the funds obtained, the team will cover transportation costs to bring to Turin students who may not have the opportunity to study this topic in depth and will continue the research activities necessary to implement the training activity.

BRIGHT: Brain Research in Interactive Game-based HyperTraining

A group of professors and researchers from the University of Turin, passionate and expert in role-playing games, want to demonstrate how these are useful in promoting learning and developing the soft skills of players, and to do so they intend to use fNIRS technology to monitor their brain activity during the game.

Citizen Salad – The invisible life on salad leaves

We all know about the importance of gut flora, but we don’t know much about the microorganisms we ingest every day with the foods we eat. The Citizen Salad research team intends to conduct a participatory experiment in which participants/donors can make their garden or balcony available to grow lettuce plants for analysis.

The results will allow us to discover how the soil and the shape of the leaves of the lettuce plants influence the bacterial communities present there.

Towards Virtual and Beyond: A Safe Social Space for Autism

People with autism face great challenges on a daily basis. A simple conversation, a gesture or a noise can represent an obstacle that is difficult to manage, generating stress, anxiety and social and emotional isolation, limiting opportunities for personal and professional growth.

The Social Interaction Lab team has an ambitious goal: to promote the integration and well-being of autistic people through personalized and safe interventions using cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality.

CultMeat – for a more sustainable future, also part of the Funds TOgether initiative

The campaign’s goal is to raise funds to improve the production of cultured meat using an experimental technique that allows stem cells to be maintained and grown at a low cost.

This study, already conducted on human stem cells for the study of muscle diseases, intends to test the same technology on pig cells through the use of specific machinery for maintaining animal cells in culture.

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(Featured image by geralt via Pixabay)

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