Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - IIT - was created with the objective of promoting Italy's technological development and higher education in science and technology. IIT's activity focuses on four strategic Research Domains: Robotics, Nanomaterials, Technologies for Life Science and Computational Sciences.

The Smart Materials research line deals with the development of new composite materials with a particular effort in using natural polymers. In IIT several facilities for the synthesis and characterization of materials at the macroscopic scale as well as the molecular level are available.