The Politecnico di Milano stands out for its strong commitment to research. Research represents a key element for comparison and competition among the best university institutes on an international basis, since advanced and innovative training programmes are devised, creating a place where university and the world of businesses meet, thus giving a strong contribution to innovation and the transformation of society.

Innovations have been created in the Politecnico di Milano’s laboratories allowing some national enterprises to establish themselves worldwide and several scientists to obtain the most important national and international scientific acknowledgements.

Today, the Politecnico di Milano is one of the leading Italian research centres, characterized by the combination of theoretical bases of excellence and first-rate research infrastructures.

From an operational point of view, the Politecnico di Milano is organized in 16 Departments including all main areas of engineering, architecture and industrial design. Each of them defines its research priorities independently, promotes its own self-financing through the cooperation with industry, public administration and other subjects, has its own research equipment, establishes relationships and synergies with other research centres. 

The interdisciplinary approach is also encouraged by several interdepartmental centres that coordinate different approaches and methods of any single department in areas of common research, such as environment and territory, combustion, economics of  communication and wind engineering. This University’s commitment to research is necessarily wide-ranging: from investigating major unresolved issues that involve a commitment in the medium-long period (basic research) to examining problems resulting from the need of innovating products and processes in the short period (targeted research) to the technology transfer and the industrial enhancement of results.