Although the School of Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine is a small structure, it is a scientific centre of excellence in Life Sciences both in the Marches and throughout Italy.
That is confirmed by a great deal of national and international prizes given to many professors who work at this university, and by several grants delivered under competition rules by Italian and foreign state-owned agencies (Ministry of Education, University and Research – in Italian: MIUR – and EC), as well as by private companies (i.e. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).
There are courses in subjects as diverse as Floristry and Systematic Botany. For that reason the university has two herbariums recognised by Index Herbariorum. Together with Gran Sasso-Laga Mountains National Park, in 2001 it founded and now manages the Apennine Floristic Research Centre (in Italian: Centro Ricerche Floristiche dell’Appennino – CRFA), located on the Southern slopes of Gran Sasso. It hosts the herbarium of about 70,000 exsiccata, the Botanical Garden and the Museum of Flowers. CRFA is an Italian point of reference for vascular plant studies and it is now known at international level and recently recognised by the Ministry of the Environment as centre of excellence of the national network for biodiversity.
