First World Conference on the Future of Science

Published: November 2025 · Updated: January 2026

Venice, September 2005. Umberto Veronesi — the 79-year-old oncologist who had pioneered breast-conserving surgery at the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan, served as Italy’s Minister of Health, and by then was a senator of the Republic — stood on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore to open a conference that would run for the next eleven years. The idea was straightforward, almost stubborn in its simplicity: put scientists and the public in the same room and see what happens.

The inaugural World Conference on the Future of Science was co-organised by the Fondazione Umberto Veronesi, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, and Fondazione Silvio Tronchetti Provera. It brought together scientists, philosophers, and policymakers for a question that sounds deceptively simple: what does science owe society?

The sessions

This was 2005. The stem cell debate was at its most heated — Bush had vetoed federal funding, South Korea’s Hwang Woo-suk scandal was months away. Climate scepticism was mainstream. The “intelligent design” trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, was still in progress. Against this backdrop, the conference asked its speakers to address the social contract between science and the rest of us.

Giulio Giorello — philosopher of science at the University of Milan, author of more than a dozen books on the intersection of scientific freedom and democratic life, who would remain active until his death in 2020 — delivered what amounted to the conference’s intellectual framework. His argument: scientific autonomy is not a privilege granted by society but a precondition for society to function. No free inquiry, no democracy worth the name.

Among the speakers was Teruhiko Wakayama, the Japanese reproductive biologist whose work on mammalian cloning at RIKEN raised exactly the kind of question Giorello was talking about. Wakayama had successfully cloned mice using a microinjection technique he developed at the University of Hawaii — work published in Nature in 1998 — and his Venice presentation addressed the ethical boundaries of reproductive technology. Where does capability end and responsibility begin? He didn’t pretend to have the answer. That was the point.

The conference also included sessions on media communication of science (a persistent sore point — most researchers felt, then as now, that journalists get it wrong), genetic engineering ethics, and nanotechnology’s early promises. Veronesi himself, drawing on four decades of clinical oncology and his experience navigating Italian health policy, moderated the closing discussion.

Press coverage and citations

The event drew substantial media attention. Corriere della Sera reported on the proceedings, as did the Fondazione Veronesi magazine. Beyond the press: the conference was cited in academic publications indexed by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a sign that the event registered in the international research community, not just the Italian popular press.

Two UKRI-funded projects — BB/J00328X/1 and BB/M018458/1 — referenced the conference proceedings in their research outputs, reflecting the event’s reach beyond Italy.

What came after

The first edition proved the format worked. Scientists would show up. The public would listen. Disagreements could be productive. Over the next eleven years the series covered evolution (2006), energy (2007), food and water (2008), DNA (2009), viruses (2010), the mind (2011), nanoscience (2012), longevity (2013), hunger (2014), precision medicine (2015), and the digital revolution (2016). Twelve editions, same island, same organisers, more than 300 speakers total.

Veronesi lived to see the series end. He died on 8 November 2016, seven weeks after the final curtain in Venice. He was 90.