In 1968, Eduardo R. Caianiello (Naples, 1921-1993) establishes the Laboratorio di Cibernetica with the aim of understanding the neuroanatomy of the brain and developing its functional mathematical models. About ten years later, the Laboratory becomes the Istituto di Cibernetica of the CNR, founded on a revolutionary approach: bringing together researchers from different thematic backgrounds, aggregating skills ranging from the physics of devices and materials to biology and biophysics, from optics to information sciences, to study in a completely innovative way the nervous systems of simple and gradually more complex organisms, their functions and regulating mechanisms. The goal is to transfer all this knowledge to the realization of future generation machines which, inspired by the functioning of biological systems, would carry out complex functions of calculation, analysis and possibly actuation.
Over the years the Institute consolidates its multidisciplinary nature and becomes a point of reference, as well as in the field of cybernetics, in innovative and emerging related research sectors, such as quantum systems in superconducting materials, biophysics and optics. In 2002 the Institute is named after its founder “Eduardo Caianiello”, and in 2015, after the contribute of new research groups joining the Institute and coming from the CNR Istituto Nazionale di Ottica in Naples and Lecce, in order to represent the new range of applied research activities carried out, it changes the name in Instituto di Scienze Applicate e Sistemi Intelligenti“Eduardo Caianiello”. In 2020, the inclusion of the former Neapolitan Unit of the CNR Istituto di Microelettronica e Microsistemi, allows a significant growth, consolidating the multidisciplinary approach which characterizes the Institute from its foundation.
