Atlas report
AI researchers in Italy
Politecnico di Milano is the largest, with 688 indexed researchers, barely ahead of University of Padua at 597. No single place dominates here.
The short answer
13 134 researchers in the index have an institution in Italy, the 10th largest count among 131 countries.
The subject where Italy weighs most against the rest of the world is Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge: 1.3% of its subject assignments work on it, 4.5 times the world share of 0.3%.
Italy counts 223 indexed AI researchers per million inhabitants, 2.6 times the world rate of 85.
What stands out
Machine Learning in Healthcare is the subject newcomers in Italy pick up fastest: 67 started on it since 2024, and its share of new entrants is 2.2 times its share in the previous window.
Industry employs 4.7% of Italy's indexed AI researchers; worldwide the share is 9.0%, so the country runs at half the average.
Italy holds 1.9% of the researchers with a known country and 0.7% of the world's population, 2.6 times its demographic weight.
Italy gained 2 311 new researchers since 2024, 1.1 times the 2 050 of the three years before; the world ratio is 1.7.
Subjects
The single most common subject is Topic Modeling, on which 5.2% of Italy's subject assignments fall.
Subject reports: Natural Language Processing Techniques, Multimodal Machine Learning Applications.
| Subject | Researchers | Share here | Share worldwide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topic Modeling | 1 250 | 5.2% | 7.8% |
| Natural Language Processing Techniques | 760 | 3.1% | 4.2% |
| Semantic Web and Ontologies | 655 | 2.7% | 1.1% |
| Advanced Neural Network Applications | 640 | 2.6% | 4.3% |
| Multimodal Machine Learning Applications | 535 | 2.2% | 3.8% |
| Neural Networks and Applications | 483 | 2.0% | 1.3% |
| Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge | 327 | 1.3% | 0.3% |
| Speech Recognition and Synthesis | 187 | 0.8% | 1.3% |
Newcomers by year
In 2025, the last full year, Italy gained 0.8 times as many new researchers as in an average year of the three before; the world figure is 0.8.
| First publication | New in Italy | Share of the world's newcomers |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 434 | 2.3% |
| 2020 | 479 | 2.3% |
| 2021 | 566 | 2.3% |
| 2022 | 794 | 2.4% |
| 2023 | 690 | 2.3% |
| 2024 | 744 | 2.6% |
| 2025 | 584 | 2.4% |
Institutions
The three largest institutions, Politecnico di Milano first, hold 14% of the country's indexed researchers.
Politecnico di Milano is the largest, with 688 indexed researchers, barely ahead of University of Padua at 597. No single place dominates here. Everyone else sits in places too small to name without pointing at individuals.
| Institution | Researchers | Share of the country |
|---|---|---|
| Politecnico di Milano | 688 | 5.2% |
| University of Padua | 597 | 4.5% |
| Sapienza University of Rome | 536 | 4.1% |
Compared with its peers
The two countries closest in size are Japan and Australia. Same order of magnitude, different profile. The gap that stands out is the share working in a company: 4.7% here, below the 9.5% of those two.
| Italy | Japan | Australia | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Researchers | 13 134 | 13 535 | 11 038 |
| Per million inhabitants | 223 | 109 | 413 |
| In a company | 4.7% | 17% | 1.8% |
| Early career | 47% | 38% | 44% |
| Newcomers, recent against previous window | 1.1 | 1.6 | 2.0 |
Method
A country is where the institution sits, so someone who has moved and not yet published from the new address still counts at the old one. Counts move between two refreshes because the index grows every night. The method page sets out the sources and what each field leaves out.
Common questions
- How many AI researchers are there in Italy?
- 13 134 researchers in the Founding Hires index have an institution in Italy, 1.9% of all profiles with a known country, as of September 2026. The index counts people who published AI research, so this is a floor on the field, not a census.
- Where do you find AI researchers in Italy?
- Politecnico di Milano, 688, University of Padua, 597, Sapienza University of Rome, 536. Their most common subject is Topic Modeling, 5.2% of the country's subject assignments.
- What is Italy strongest in?
- Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge, at 4.5 times the world share.
- Is the pool of AI researchers in Italy growing?
- Yes, slower than the world. Since 2024, 2 311 people in Italy published for the first time, against 2 050 over the three years before, a ratio of 1.1 where the world sits at 1.7.
The names behind the numbers
Every count on this page is a list in the index.
Search it by subject and country to find who leads the work today, and set an alert on the ones about to come free, for $179 a month or 149 € in the euro area. Or hand the search over and pay only when someone joins.