CRS4 is a private research center, but its shareholder is a regional agency: Sardegna Ricerche.

The center, initially headed by the Nobel Prize in Physics Carlo Rubbia, made the first Italian Website (www.crs4.it) in September 1993, and collaborated to the creation of the first European web newspaper in 1994 (L'Unione Sarda) and to one of the first and largest internet providers (Video On Line). In this sense CRS4 has been crucial for the development of the Internet and Web in Sardinia.[1][2]

Since 2010, about 200 researchers are working at CRS4 and the 4 main strategic research sectors are:

Biomedicine Data Fusion Energy and Environment Information Society

CRS4 is one of the major Italian Computing Centers and is equipped with the first Genotyping and massive DNA Sequencing Platform in Italy and with a state-of-the-art Visual Computing laboratory.