University of Trieste  The University of Trieste (, or UniTS) is a public research university in Trieste in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region in northeast Italy. The university consists of 10 departments, boasts a wide and almost complete range of university courses and has about 15,000 students and 1,000 professors. It was founded in 1924. The historical international vocation of the University of Trieste is witnessed by its intense and high-level activity: Trieste is the centre of many research facilities, with which the university is connected by cooperation agreements. Among them, there are the International School for Advanced Studies, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the National Institute of Oceanography, the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste Facility, the Trieste sections of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and many others, building up the so-called "sistema Trieste" (Trieste System). Moreover, the number of international inter-university co-operation agreements rapidly increased these last years. These agreements involve staff and student mobility, both within EU Programmes like the Socrates programme and agreements exclusively concerned with research activities. The 2014 Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked it second among Italian universities. In 2019, U.S. News & World Report placed it at #67 among the top 100 universities in the world for Space Science. In the 2018 Round University Ranking of world universities, it stands at #99 for Life Sciences in the world. Before World War I, when Trieste was still a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Italian-speaking population strongly supported the idea of building a university in the town, but Austrian authorities repeatedly rejected the proposal. After the annexation of Trieste to Italy, the already existing "Superior School in Commerce" was granted the same rights of similar schools in Italy, and in 1924 it was turned into a university, by king's decree (8 August 1924, n. 1338). In 1938, with the institution of the Law faculty, the second after the Economy and Commerce faculty, the university became a "Studium Generale" (General Studies) one, and thus was given the title of "Regia Università degli Studi" (King's University). In the same year, the construction of a new building to house the faculties began on the Scoglietto hill, in a position dominating the Old City.