Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica

CINI (Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per l’Informatica, www.consorzio-cini.it) is a consortium of Computer Science and Computer Engineering research groups operating within Italian Universities. It was founded in 1990 as a non-profit organization to foster the co-operation of Italian computer scientists and engineers in nation-wide and international projects in the area of computing and data communication.

It currently comprises the major Italian Universities and receives support by the Ministry for University and Research (MIUR) and by the Ministry for Industry. Similarly to other consortia recently activated across Europe CINI research activities are performed by the Research Units located at the member Universities, or via structures created ex-novo by the CINI itself. ITEM is the CINI National Laboratory for Computaer Science and Multimedia Systems, located in Napoli. It has been founded at the beginning of 2000 as an effort of CINI in cooperation with the “Federico II” University of Napoli thanks to a start-up grant of the Italian Ministry for University and Research.

The Laboratory has been established with the specific objective of tackling research and technological issues in the area of design, control and management of complex network infrastructures and distributed information systems. ITEM has been or is currently involved in the following major projects:

• the European projects CADENUS (FP5-IST-1999-11017) and INTERMON (FP5-IST-2001-34123);

• the European Network of Excellence E-NEXT (FP6-IST-2003-506869);

• the European projects NETQoS (FP6-IST-2005-033516) and OneLab (FP6-IST-2005-034819);

• the European Network of Excellence CONTENT (FP6-IST-2005-0384239).