organizationResearch & InnovationItaly

Fondazione Bruno Kessler

Multidisciplinary research institution in technology, humanities, and social sciences based in Trento, Italy.

Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) is a multidisciplinary research institution based in Trento, Italy, specializing in technology, innovation, the humanities, and social sciences. Established as a private entity of an associative nature by the Autonomous Province of Trento on 1 March 2007, it carries forward the legacy of the Istituto Trentino di Cultura, itself founded by local administrator and University of Trento founder Bruno Kessler. FBK's primary funding derives from a Programme Agreement with the Autonomous Province of Trento.

FBK hosts a community of over 400 researchers, 140 doctoral students, 200 visiting fellows and thesis students, and 700 affiliates and accredited students, operating across 3,500 square meters of laboratories and scientific infrastructure. Its campus functions as a hub for co-located ventures, spin-offs, and training initiatives. For over 30 years, FBK has been active in AI, cybersecurity, and IoT research, with current priority areas including quantum technology, ecological transition, and digital transformation.

FBK is ranked as Italy's top research institute, achieving first place for scientific excellence in three subject areas — ICT, History, and Sociology — and for economic and social impact according to the ANVUR quality-of-research evaluation. Its European role includes attracting international talent and resources to keep the Trento province at the forefront of technological and humanities research.

Innovations in AI, cybersecurity, IoT, and quantum technology are directly relevant to FBK's core research agenda, making the institution a natural stakeholder in cutting-edge developments across those fields.

Ideas that could help Fondazione Bruno Kessler

Lexicometric Corpus Builder for Discipline-Specific Academic Dictionaries
A reusable pipeline and methodology — modeled on DIA's corpus construction and automated lexicometric analysis — offered as a service to linguistic research groups in other languages or disciplines who want to build their own function-organized academic vocabulary resources.
Why it helps: FBK's NLP division in Trento already builds Italian language resources; co-developing the automated lexicometric pipeline with DIA would strengthen Italy's language-technology export capacity.