The ISI Foundation is a 27 years old private research Institution founded and supported by the Regional Government, the Province of Torino, the City of Torino and by the two main Bank Foundations (CRT-Cassa di Risparmio di Torino and Compagnia di San Paolo).
ISI is located at Villa Gualino situated within magnificent grounds on the first slopes of the hills surrounding Torino.
Focal point of the ISI mission is the idea of promoting scientific cooperation at the highest degree of quality both in terms of creativity and of novelty. The aim is that of performing and coordinating the joint research efforts in those areas which respond to the two key prerequisites of being on the one hand interfaceable with technology and advanced pre-industrial research and on the other of responding to the ample spectrum of needs of society, qualifying also as a pole of high level interdisciplinary training in the fields of Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science, Life Sciences. ISI aims of course to be competitive, but also to provide a privileged channel of scientific interchange and communication with those institutions which, for their methodological choices, their vocational policies, their qualifications have already initiated at the optimal degree of scientific and intellectual elevation to operate in the frame of complexity.
The ISI Foundation consists of four main Divisions and nine Units lead by international level scientists, while the SAB (Scientific Advisory Board) has the duty of identifying the research lines of the Institute.