CNIT is a non-profit consortium established in 1995 and bringing together 37 public Italian universities to perform research, innovation and education/training activities in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). CNIT also owns four National Laboratories: “Multimedia Communications”, in Naples; “Photonic Networks & Technologies”, in Pisa; “Radar and Surveillance Systems”, in Pisa; “Smart, Sustainable and Secure Internet Technologies and Infrastructures”, in Genoa. More than 1,300 professors and researchers, belonging to the member universities, collaborate within CNIT, together with more than 100 CNIT own employees. CNIT participated in hundreds of research projects, including EU coordinated projects, ERC grants and Italian nation-wide initiatives. In the EU H2020 program, CNIT has obtained 41 projects and coordinated 10 of them. CNIT’s funding comes from private companies and competitive programs. The innovation and technology transfer of research results from universities towards end-users and industry is a primary mission for CNIT. CNIT also facilitates the cooperation between member universities and promotes the collaboration of the same universities with other research institutes and with national and international industries.
CNIT is very active in 5G and related initiatives: i) CNIT participates in several EU projects on 5G and coordinates a number of them (four such projects ranked first in their respective calls); ii) CNIT is an elected member of the 5GPPP (https://5g-ppp.eu/), a 1.4 Billion Euro joint initiative including the European Commission and the European ICT industries and academia to rethink the network infrastructure and to create the next generation of communication networks and services; iii) CNIT participates in the 5G trials of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development in Milan; iv) CNIT participates in several EU projects on applications of 5G (e.g., for intelligent transport systems and autonomous vehicles) and in the Graphene and Quantum Information flagships projects.