The governing bodies of the ICSC Foundation took office on July 19, 2022, formally establishing Italy’s National Research Center in High Performance Computing (HPC), Big Data, and Quantum Computing. The center is one of five national centers created under Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, or PNRR), funded by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU program.
According to the ICSC Foundation, the center received approximately €320 million in EU recovery funds. Proposed by the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), it has 51 founding members from the public and private sectors. ICSC is based at the Bologna Technopole, which also hosts the European Weather Center’s data hub and the Leonardo supercomputer managed by CINECA.
Organized through a hub-and-spoke model, the center coordinates research across ten thematic areas while maintaining and upgrading Italian HPC and Big Data infrastructure. Quantum computing is a core element of the center’s mission, with resources dedicated to integrating emerging quantum technologies alongside classical supercomputing capabilities.