What is the School?

The European School of Genetic Medicine (ESGM) has been offering during the last 30 years different courses for the advanced training in the fields of genetics and genomics in medicine.
More than 7.000 students from an increasing number of countries have attended these ESGM courses which take place mostly in Italy. They are young people (M.D. during their specialty training, Ph.D. candidates, post-doc, genetic nurses, etc.) with an average age of 30 years.
A special opportunity to attend the ESGM courses is offered by the fellowships mostly granted by the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG), which are made available for approximately 20% of students in each course

The primary training venue of ESGM is today the Centro Universitario di Bertinoro in Italy (CeUB). The first course of the School, like many other subsequent courses, took place in Sestri Levante (Genova, Italy) in 1988. The faculty of the course included many European medical geneticists who later became the leaders of the reformed European Society of Human Genetics.
One of the major effects of the courses of the School has been to upgrade the teaching and the practice of medical genetics in Europe, by “teaching the teachers”. The multiplier effect of this “teaching the teachers” has been the catalyst in the development of medical genetics as a specialty in Europe.
For further information regarding the founding of the School see: “The early years of the ESHG leading to the reform of 1988 and the spirit of the Sestri Levante school”