The newly elected Executive Council of CRS Italy Chapter convened for its first meeting on January 24th, 2023 in Milan. During the meeting, I was honoured to be nominated as President of the chapter, with Prof. Pasquale Del Gaudio as Vice President, Prof. Fabio Palumbo as Secretary, and Prof. Rossella Dorati as Treasurer.

The Executive Council immediately began discussing our mandate for the next three years, with contributions from Auditors and Arbiters. We established a clear vision for the evolution of CRS-IT as an open-hub of cultural facilities to serve the community, with a particular emphasis on supporting young scientists as future leaders. We also recognized inclusiveness as a fundamental trait of CRS-IT activities, essential to fostering the growth of our scientific society.

The Executive Council has set a few main perspectives for the evolution of CRS-IT.

First, we aim to be a knowledge hub for dissemination, sharing, and contamination. We will support and harmonize the dissemination, communication, and sharing of knowledge within the society's members through dedicated initiatives. We recognize that the fields of drug delivery, controlled release, and new therapeutic approach development require multidisciplinary perspectives. As such, we plan to include medics operating in preclinical and clinical studies, alongside pharmaceutical technologists, chemists, engineers, and biotechnologists.

Secondly, we aim to provide visibility through communication of CRS-IT within the international community and other chapters. We will use various media to share accessible information, including dissemination initiatives by CRS-IT members (symposia, workshops and seminars), new job and grant opportunities, and research awards.

Thirdly, we aim to serve as a connection hub bridging Italian academic and industrial scientists. CRS-IT has unique cultural content to be shared with pharmaceutical companies. In the next few years, we will establish two-way communication with industrial scientists to match the expertise and facilities available in the CRS-IT community with the needs of industries. This action will facilitate the evolution of a collaborative academic network.

Finally, we aim to provide "soft tools" for development. CRS-IT is a live and growing scientific community contributing to the development of the health products of the future. Therefore, a strong interplay between young and senior scientists is vital for scientific advancement. We plan to support this interplay through focused initiatives to develop young scientists' skills in project planning and management, communication, grant proposal writing, teaching, career self-assessment, and entrepreneurship. The already established young communication team (YCT) will actively support this action.