The Cortona-week is a multidisciplinary residence week devoted to the integration between science and the humanities that takes place yearly (since 1985) in Cortona, a small and beautiful medieval city in Tuscany, was at the beginning supported by a Swiss private sponsor (Dr. B.W.) and is now entirely financed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Zürich (ETH-Z), one of the main technical universities in Europe. Originally, the meeting -now open to all students and disciplines- was targeted to science graduate students of the ETH-Z. The original goal of the meeting was to counteract what is seen as one paradox of our traditional academic training: that excellent specialists coming out from our universities are not best fit to tackle the problems of our society, since these problems generally involve a co-ordination of various disciplines, namely a team work with other specialists, for which the highly specialised graduated are not trained. The other shortcoming of our academic curriculum is that our average university students have necessarily to be concentrated in their academic programs for as long as 7 to 10 years and during this long time they may loose contact with the humanistic aspects of life, art and music, poetry and spirituality-perhaps the qualities that one needs in leadership.

To the Cortona meeting participate ca. 150-160 people, included the teaching staff. There are typically 60-80 students in all disciplines (the majority being in the sciences), 10-15 older academicians, the rest being formed by artists.

The characteristic features of this meeting are:
1.All participants live in the same premise the full week, partial participation being not allowed, not even to the teaching staff. In fact, particular important is the communal life, the continuous inter-crossing and spontaneous personal encounters.
2. The Corona meeting takes place in the second week of September, during the break of the Swiss teaching terms, so as to avoid interference with the normal university courses. It is organised as an attractive summer camp, people "work" however more than 10 hrs a day.
3. There are each day two plenary lectures in the morning, while the afternoon is divided in three sections, devoted to three types of "workshops"(small working groups). There are i) theoretical workshops (philosophy of science, history, religiosity subjects, ii) "experience groups" with emphasis on psychological experimentation; and iii) creativity workshops (painting, music, sculpturing, acting), with emphasis on re-discovering "forgotten" values of life. Hand-work activities are particularly encouraged. One can join meditation groups in the early morning.
4. All is optional. The large number of workshops (more than 20 during the week) is there not with the idea of doing all of them- on the contrary; the idea is to choose/find those few that one needs for the personal integration. The choice can be hard, and this is part of the exercise.
5. The highest scientific standard and professionality is sought in the workshop teaching staff and morning speakers. This is particularly important in these interdisciplinary programs, that run often into the danger of watering science
6. In addition to integration science and humanities, the Cortona meeting is also a place where intercultural contacts are encouraged. In the last couple of years, student delegations from California Institute of Technology, from Osaka University (which included two guest Chinese students), from British Columbia (Vancouver) were participating.

Clearly one week is short to implement a real interdisciplinary program, or to become an integrated scientist. However, one week is enough to rediscover forgotten aspects of life and to discover new ones. Also, the Cortona week permits to effectively establish the human links and connections for a further work. It is true that this experience is limited to those who come to the Cortona week, and therefore is not for all university students. On the other hand, the alternative is to add compulsory teaching hours in the social sciences to the normal programs of our science university students-and this alternative has shown over the years its limitations and low efficiency. The final aim of the Cortona idea would be the construction of an international network of universities that share the same gist and permit in this way the formation of integrated scientists and leaders.