Luiss is actively participating in “Mission 4: Education and Research” of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). Luiss’s involvement in the PNRR aims to promote the spread of innovative research models, support processes for innovation and technology transfer, and strengthen research centers, capital, and skills to support innovation.

Luiss hosts the following PNRR and PRIN PNRR projects: 
 

ARISE – The Anatomy of Risk in Science

Scientific lead: Nicola Melluso

Scientific progress plays a crucial role in driving technological innovation, addressing societal challenges, and improving quality of life. At the heart of scientific innovation lies the dynamic between progress and risk, where pushing the boundaries of knowledge creates both uncertainties and opportunities simultaneously. At the heart of this process lies the science funding system, which, while essential for supporting ambitious projects, is often criticized for a possible lack of support for high-risk research.
The ARISE project aims to address the main challenges related to risk appetite in scientific research by pursuing the following objectives: 1) Developing a set of metrics that can effectively assess the potential risk of a research project using textual and bibliographic information; 2) Identifying the factors that contribute to conservatism in funding evaluation processes; 3) Empirically evaluating funding strategies for high-risk, high-reward research, with a specific focus on the European Research Council (ERC).

PROMISILFA - Protocol for measuring the sustainability and quality of suppliers to leading agri-food companies

Scientific lead: Cristiano Busco

 PROMISILFA, the Protocol for measuring the sustainability and quality of suppliers to leading agri-food companies, with the support of Federalimentare, establishes an innovative protocol model for measuring the sustainability and quality of suppliers to leading agri-food companies. The project’s main objectives are: 1) to define indicators for measuring and evaluating the sustainability of supplier companies by the supply chain leader; 2) to develop a protocol that takes into account new European regulations and international frameworks on sustainability, to be tested on a sample of at least 10–15 companies, including supply chain leaders, downstream and upstream companies; 3) to arrive at an innovative definition and interpretation of the “concept” of the extended agri-food supply chain, from agricultural production to the processing industry, from distribution to final consumers, improving the efficiency and sustainability of production, distribution, and consumption processes.

Rome Technopole

The Rome Technopole project is the response from Lazio's universities and manufacturing sector to the pressing need for revitalization and the opportunities presented by the Next Generation EU plan. Luiss is participating in the project through two of the six functional thematic Spokes. 

Spoke 1. Applied research, technology development, and innovation

Scientific lead: Giuseppe Francesco Italiano 

Spoke 1 focuses on activities related to vertical research and innovation projects developed through collaboration between industry and research partners. These include specific vertical ecosystem projects, starting with fundamental research to foster innovation and frontier research, and extending to industrial research, pre-competitive development, and technology development to promote and support innovation. 

Spoke 2. Technology transfer, new entrepreneurship, business incubation, and acceleration

Scientific lead: Christian Lechner

Spoke 2 focuses on: 1) the growth and industrial exploitation of research results from Rome Technopole with a TRL greater than 5; 2) technology transfer; 3) the development of and support for new forms of entrepreneurship; 4) business incubation and acceleration, including the management of intellectual property rights and open innovation.

SERICS – SEcurity and RIghts in the CyberSpace

Scientific lead: Paolo Spagnoletti 

Cybersecurity is a top concern for governments worldwide. Examples of threats include the blocking of commercial transactions, the unlawful control of critical infrastructure services, and the theft of intellectual property or important information. Not only industry, but also democracy can be attacked in cyberspace. These considerations raise the question of how to defend cyberspace from threats and attacks that, through malicious cyber actions, compromise a country's financial stability, public order, and democratic life. For this reason, it is particularly important to engage institutions, universities, research centers, and companies in an increasingly intensive and integrated manner. Based on this plan, the SERICS Extended Partnership includes projects addressing the following topics: Protecting data and services on the web, Detecting malware, Combating cybercrime, Defending democracy, Defending artificial intelligence, Ensuring privacy, Preparing for quantum computer attacks, and Defending hardware.

SHIELD - Securing Decentralized Finance and Remote Healthcare Systems

Scientific lead: Antonio Punzi

The SHIELD project tackles cybersecurity challenges in two highly critical areas with a significant social impact: decentralized finance and remote healthcare systems. As part of the SERICS Extended Partnership, SHIELD aims to bolster the protection of users and digital infrastructure through advanced technological solutions. Specifically, the project aims to: 1) develop machine learning-based techniques to prevent and combat fraud in decentralized finance systems; 2) design tools for identifying risks and protecting medical devices and personal data in remote healthcare systems; and 3) improve the ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats in complex and distributed digital environments.

TRUSTSCIENC - The erosion of trust and the denial of science

Scientific lead: Elena Bruni 

TRUSTSCIENC aims to address the urgent need to understand and counteract the loss of trust in key institutions, particularly the scientific community. This often leads to a sense of denial and rejection of the validity of science, also known as “science denial.” The project will develop an innovative analytical framework that can provide crucial insights into 1) how the erosion of institutional trust leads to collective science denial; 2) how to mitigate, counter, and ultimately neutralize the effects of science denial not only on individuals but also on the community. 

Data4Innovation - Data Ecosystem governance to enhance data sharing for innovation: implications for organizations 

Scientific lead: Paolo Spagnoletti

This project, aligned with the National Research Program (PNR) 2021-2027, within the Research and Innovation area “Digital, Industry, and Aerospace” and the focus areas “Digital Transition - i4.0,” “High-Performance Computing and Big Data,” “Artificial Intelligence,” and “Innovation for Manufacturing,” will contribute to a better understanding of: 1) the tensions that arise in data ecosystems; 2) how data ecosystem governance addresses these tensions; and 3) how data infrastructure influences collaboration among stakeholders. Furthermore, the project will explicitly focus on the role played by SMEs. More specifically, the aim is to understand: 4) how data ecosystems encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to participate; 5) whether and how SME participation in these ecosystems affects their organizations and results; and 6) how SME participation influences the evolution of data ecosystems. 

From the margins to the mainstream: Novel perspectives on outsider innovators

Scientific lead: Federica Brunetta

In this project, the University of Bologna and Luiss University are collaborating to offer new perspectives on the path to legitimacy for outsider innovators. The project brings together theories and developments from entrepreneurship, innovation management, sociology, and social psychology. The researchers aim to examine the mechanisms behind “outsiderness” through a multi-method, multidisciplinary research project that combines historiographical approaches, experimental design, and big data analysis to generate insights across multiple levels of analysis.

GOST – Governance of Sustainable Transition

Scientific lead: Alessandro Zattoni 

Companies are more willing to tackle the challenge of sustainable transition if it maximizes the creation of economic, social, and environmental value. However, despite mounting pressure from regulators, investors, and other stakeholders, the integration of socio-environmental issues still occupies limited space on the agendas of many companies' boards of directors. The project will primarily focus on a sample of in-depth, cross-cutting studies aimed at identifying the factors that both hinder and enable socio-environmental integration, as well as understanding best practices related to traditional and innovative sustainability governance mechanisms. The insights from this analysis will lead to an investigation of how traditional companies perceive the feasibility of these mechanisms, assessing their risks and opportunities. This project will yield a series of models on innovative and traditional sustainability governance mechanisms.

GVCDIG - Global Value Chains, Digitalization, and Polarization in Europe 

Scientific lead: Maria Savona

This project aims to explore the link between GVCs and digitalization, and its implications for polarization both within country-industries and along GVCs, highlighting the consequences in terms of economic and social inequality. For this analysis, we will consider three main sources of socio-economic inequality: 1) the share of value added allocated to labor compensation; 2) wage polarization; and 3) the polarization of the employment structure, taking into account the different functional specializations within and between country-industries.

SETA - Studying the impact of anti-analysis techniques in IoT security evaluations

Scientific lead: Emilio Coppa 

IoT devices have become an essential part of our lives, offering significant improvements in quality of life while being easy to carry and use. However, the widespread adoption of these devices has brought about several cybersecurity challenges related to the proper and secure handling of information. Finding suitable security standards and strategies is a complex challenge due to the diverse nature of IoT devices. The SETA project, “Studying the impact of anti-analysis Techniques in IoT security evaluations,” aims to provide a comprehensive and in-depth characterization of how manufacturers can employ anti-analysis techniques in IoT devices to hinder security evaluations; an analysis of existing anti-analysis strategies across a large set of firmware extracted from IoT devices; the development of innovative static and dynamic methods to detect and mitigate such techniques; a comprehensive threat model; and a taxonomy of capabilities that manufacturers could use to hinder the analysis of IoT devices.

Supply Chain Disruptions, Financial Losses, and How to Prevent Them

Scientific lead: Marco Scarsini

The project aims to bolster the resilience of the entire economic system through the following key actions: 1) connecting supply chains and financial networks; 2) examining the impact of supply chain disruptions on the whole ecosystem, including default cascades, with a focus on the entire network; 3) building credit risk models directly linked to systemic issues in production and supply chains; 4) designing early warning systems; and 5) studying mechanisms for reconstruction, resilience, and protection that, when used together, can mitigate the effects of future disasters. 

Voices from the Margins - The End of Christian Democracy: The Collapse of a Political Dream

Scientific director: Rosario Forlenza 

This project examines the end of the Christian Democracy party from a historical and anthropological perspective, exploring the experiences of local activists and elites and revealing their evolving views on politics, society, culture, and participation in the public sphere. The project's main argument is that the collapse of the Christian Democracy party was not merely a critical juncture in political history, but the shattering of a political dream that gave rise to a constellation of meanings, symbolism, and memories that remain alive across broad swathes of the Italian body politic. The project will therefore investigate: 1) what the party's demise meant for grassroots activists; 2) how they made sense of the end and collapse of their political dream; 3) what the legacy of their prior political engagement was, and how that legacy influenced their subsequent political ideas and experiences.