From Oxford, where she was the first (female) Full Professor in Cardiovascular Medicine, to the Imperial in London as head of the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI): we celebrate the "change of direction" of Barbara Casadei, one of the first students in the year the Collegio Nuovo was founded.
She was one of the first Alumnae to take advantage of the College's new post-graduate scholarships abroad, established on the occasion of its tenth anniversary (1988): she should have stayed for six months and instead she remained in Oxford, burning her stages of a career on the rise, which led her, among other things, to also be the first female President of the European Society of Cardiology. In this capacity she returned to the College to give the Sandra Bruni Mattei Lecture.
A memory of his arrival at the College as a freshman:
“I therefore arrived in Pavia with my first class 'medal', convinced that I was 'special'. The first step towards downsizing and an adult life for me dates back to the moment before the entrance exam, when, chatting with the other competitors, I realized that, in that context, I was just average, certainly not among the most brilliant. This realization was fundamental to my academic development and influenced the rest of my professional choices.”
Of his College, years later, he wrote: “The value of an institution lies in those who are part of it; the habit of listening and the esteem for the talent of many companions began in those years a long journey towards openness and distancing from what appears narrow or too comfortable until the realization of a choice: to live, perhaps like a small fish, but in the ocean, collegially.”
