Rail Education in Italy: The Successful Experience of Cooperation Between Academia and Industry at Sapienza

The aim of this paper is to describe three different examples of cooperation between academia and industry in the field of railway transport that have been successfully carried out at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in the last few years. The first experience is the postgraduate course in “Railway Infrastructure and Systems Engineering” promoted by “La Sapienza” and funded by the major rail companies operating in Italy that for years represents perhaps the most important initiative in Italy to train and then hire young engineers in the rail sector. The second experience is a course on “Risk assessment in the Railway Sector” delivered by “La Sapienza” for engineers employed in Trenitalia, the main Italian Railway Undertaking, owned by FS Italiane Group. This type of training is more common, but it is interesting to note that companies in Italy require academia to train their engineers in a crucial and rapidly evolving field such as railway safety. The last experience is a specialization course in “Infrastructures and Railways System” designed and delivered together by “La Sapienza” and Italferr, the engineering service company of the FS Italiane Group, for the Sultanate of Oman Ministry of Transport & Communications, which is an interesting example of how companies and academia can work together to export Italian railway know-how to the world. It is possible to note that the three cases are examples of three different levels of collaboration between academia and companies: the first level concerns the recruitment and the basic training of young engineers to be employed in companies; the second the specialist training of engineers already employed in companies; the third a training activity for third parties useful to export Italian railway know-how and technology in the world.