After funding was established by Law 232 of 2016 and the Budget Act of 2017, the Departments of Excellence were selected within Italian public Universities by an ad-hoc Commission nominated by MIUR (the Ministry of Universities and Research). Selection criteria comprised quality of research, as assessed by the VQR 2011-2014, as well as development projects submitted by candidate departments.

Among 180 awards distributed nation-wide, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies obtained funding for two Departments of Excellence; one will be part of the Faculty of Experimental and Applied Sciences, and the other of the Faculty of Social Sciences (funding will cover a five-year period, from 2018 to 2022).

Economics and Management in the era of Data  Science (EMbeDS)