An international collaboration which involved research teams from Italy, Norway, Sweden and USA has reconstructed the hunting mechanisms of orcas, identifying roles and techniques. The study, published in Current Biology, used drone footage to analyse the behaviour of orcas

For the first time in history, two quantum photonic chips developed by the Italian National Research Council of Italy have been launched into space. This milestone was achieved thanks to an international collaboration involving the Cnt Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies, the University of Vienna, the Technische Universität München, the German Aerospace Center and other European partners

The 2025 Antiquity Prize, established by the prestigious archaeological journal Antiquity, has been awarded to the study of the Oued Beht site in Morocco. This site has yielded significant evidence of the oldest and most extensive agricultural complex known in Africa outside the Nile Valley, dating from 3400 to 2900 BCE. The discovery underscores the key role of North Africa—particularly the Maghreb—in the late prehistory of the Mediterranean.The findings are the result of the Oued Beht Archaeological Project (OBAP), an international and multidisciplinary initiative launched in 2021 under a scientific cooperation programme

An international study led by the Cnr-Institute of Polar Sciences (Cnr-Isp) and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice has revealed that at the end of the last glacial period, the deep Circumpolar Current rose along the margin of the Ross Sea, contributing to the retreat of the ice sheet. The research, published in Science Advances, lays the groundwork for predicting how the Antarctic ecosystem may respond to ongoing global warming

An international research effort coordinated by the Institute of Science, Technology and Sustainability for Ceramics (CNR-ISSMC) of Italy's National Research Council reveals how the rapid formation of nanocrystals in magma drastically increases its viscosity, fueling highly explosive volcanic eruptions and offering a new key to understanding the dynamics of such eruptions. The study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, opens new perspectives not only for volcanology but also for the design of advanced materials like industrial glass-ceramics

Artificial intelligence (AI) can effectively support doctors in making diagnoses. It makes different mistakes than humans—and this complementarity represents a previously untapped strength. An international team led by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in collaboration with partners from the Human Diagnosis Project and the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy now systematically demonstrated for the first time that combining human expertise with AI models leads to the most accurate open-ended diagnoses 

The  new Cnr Laboratory on Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) was presented on June 18th, at the Rome headquarters of the National Research Council of Italy. In will involve 11 Cnr research Institutes, with the goal to share ideas, information, initiatives, and tools aimed at harmonizing the wide-ranging scientific expertise present within the Cnt to jointly develop new projects on LCT and sustainability topics

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) has announced the allocation of €63 million under the 2024 IV Call of the Higher Education Initiative. The funding will support 47 cross-sector projects aimed at strengthening the innovation capacity of higher education institutions across Europe. Among the selected projects is CREATECH, coordinated by the Department of Social sciences and humanities, cultural heritage of the National Research Council of Italy (Cnr-Dsu), with contributions from Cnr’s Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean (Cnr-ISMed) and Institute of Heritage Science (Cnr-Ispc). Launched on 1 April 2025 and running until April 2027, the project was officially kicked off at an international meeting held on 21 May

In a study recently published in the journal Mammalian Biology, a team of researchers from the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) and the National Biodiversity Future Center (NBFC) has documented, for the first time in Europe, the presence of the Maghrebian bent-wing bat (Miniopterus maghrebensis), a species previously thought to be restricted to North Africa

The European Commission has granted the legal status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) to DANUBIUS-RI, the International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems. Italy is amongst the partners with Cnr as a coordinator