Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia aims to promote excellence in basic and applied research and to promote the development of the national economy. IIT scientific activity is based on a 6-year strategic plan which consists of 4 Research Domains: Robotics, Nanomaterials, Lifetech and Computational Sciences. IIT's total staff is comprised of 1694 people from more than 60 countries. Average age is 35 years and 41% of the staff are women. The scientific field is represented approximately by 80% of overall staff. Approximately 49% of scientific staff come from abroad. Of these, 34% consist of foreigners and 16% are Italians who returned from abroad. To date (April 2019), IIT’s production includes more than 12500 publications, over 200 European projects and more than 30 ERC (European Research Council) projects, almost 800 active patent applications, 20 established start-ups and more than 30 under due diligence.