An account of the visit to the Novara facility
The morning of the “Inside Innovation: A Day at Amazon” tour, at the Amazon MXP6 facility in Novara, begins with sunshine and spring-like temperatures. It is Monday 16 March and the participants are around forty students from schools in Lombardy and Piedmont: Giovanni Giorgi in Milan, Maserati in Voghera, G. Ferrari in Gattinara and Ascanio Sobrero in Casale Monferrato, who have worked on five finalist projects for the Make IT Real challenge [see the news item A Day at Amazon].
The students are curious and excited to step inside Amazon, where the final stage of every purchase’s dispatch takes place – a state-of-the-art logistics hub featuring innovative use of technology, and where everything is governed by the principle of ‘safety first’. MXP6 is certainly not, even upon entering, a cold and impersonal place; every area of this site, which is as vast as six football pitches, is designed with the employee in mind, with numerous measures to punctuate the day with small rituals (stretching, breaks, refreshments).
Giulia Gandolfi, Corporate PR, CSR & Reputation Senior Project Manager at Amazon, welcomed the group and spoke of the company’s commitment to supporting local communities, and the focus on the world of education: “Through our programmes, we aim to reach 200,000 students by 2026, with a particular focus on supporting opportunities related to STEM studies. Make IT Real, by stimulating the entrepreneurial and innovative potential of young people, contributes significantly to this goal.”
The students, alongside their teachers, follow the designated tour route with Amazon tour leaders Federica Perito and Camilla Brignoli. They pass by miles of conveyor belts moving in every direction, shelves full of goods moved by robots, and air-based labelling systems to protect customer privacy. The human element, however, is always present, and the robotic systems guide and suggest; they never impose themselves on workers’ choices. They always provide valuable support and assistance within the work system: this mechanism, running like clockwork, enables an incoming order to be fulfilled within an average of three hours.
The students are very curious about all the workings of this highly sophisticated system. The final pitch session presents a major challenge: in five minutes, each team must ‘convince’ the audience that the application they have designed, presented in a pitch, can deliver a tangible benefit. Working with the Party Rock platform, the students chose one of several proposed themes: SportTech Career Finder, GreenMove – Sustainable solutions for the mobility of the future, AI for Good – Design an AI to improve your community, Smart Logistics – Design an AI to optimise deliveries and warehouses.
Here is a sneak peek at the first five projects presented in Novara, which, together with those from the other participating schools, will go through to the final at RomeCup 2026.
Future Careers in Sport: designed by Gabriele Bertolla and Daniel Buccino from Class 5 AE at the Sobrero Institute in Casale Monferrato, this is an interactive AI-based application that helps users discover new career opportunities in the fields of sport and technology. By selecting their interests and preferences, users receive personalised career recommendations focused on making sport more accessible, sustainable and innovative. The students were supervised by teacher Fulvio Prete.
Workflow: created by Noemi Frattini, Noemi Trestini, Houdail Bentaja and Ainara Lippi, Class 2 IPA, IIS Maserati in Voghera, is an app designed to enhance human resources by enabling the tracking of hours worked, including overtime, a shift-swapping system based on a marketplace model, and many other features that improve employees’ lives. The students were accompanied by teacher Federica Laneri.
Voce Civica: conceived by Diego Anostini, Tashriful M Alom and Christian Cipriano from ITI Giorgi in Milan, the app aims to respond promptly to reports of dangerous or dilapidated conditions in the city by bypassing complex administrative bureaucracy, in the knowledge that all too often ‘the City has Eyes, but no Voice’. The students were accompanied by teacher Mirto Musci.
Go Valsesia: the app was developed by Andrea Margarini, Giacomo Lavezzo, Paolo Luigi Sacchi and Josè Martin Olortegui Shuan from the IS Ferrari Mercurino in Gattinara. It aims to promote the local community of Valsesia, an Alpine valley in northern Piedmont, known as the greenest in Italy. Through the information provided, visitors can obtain personalised, sustainable itinerary suggestions designed for efficiency. The students were accompanied by teacher Marco Crosa.
Green Move: developed by Gianluca Montaldi, Cristian Chiavegati and Emanuele Conti from Class 5 AE at IS Sobrero in Casale Monferrato, is an app that helps communities transform their transport systems into eco-friendly and sustainable mobility networks. GreenMove demonstrates how AI can transform complex social challenges into accessible, practical solutions that enable communities to create sustainable futures.
The upcoming events will take place at the Amazon facility in San Salvo (Chieti), at the Innovation Gym for the prototyping day, and finally, for the closing event at Sapienza University of Rome (Marco Polo Building) as part of RomeCup 2026 (28–30 April).
