EOSC Node | Italy - EOSC Association

The Italian EOSC Node, operated by the Italian Research Center on High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing (ICSC), federates resources from over 50 members, including national research infrastructures, ERICs, service providers, and e-Infrastructures.

Supported by the Italian government, the Node provides federated cloud and HPC infrastructure, national research product catalogues, repositories, AAI, and training services. With ISO27001-certified cloud regions and national HPC centres (Cineca, INFN), the Italian EOSC Node integrates compute, storage, and data analysis services into EOSC. It will contribute to the EOSC Federation with federated services and cross-node use cases.

Key objective: To enrich the EOSC Federation with state-of-the-art federated HPC, cloud, and data services, enabling cross-node workflows, secure sensitive data analysis, and support for AI and quantum technologies.

Science areas: HPC, cloud and quantum computing, astrophysics, life sciences, physics, environment, and AI/ML applications.

SCIENTIFIC IMPACT

FAIR data

The Italian EOSC Node provides access to repositories with Open Access publications and datasets, as well as other resource repositories. FAIR compliance is ensured via metadata registries, catalogues, and semantic interoperability policies.

Scientific use cases

Federating CERN’s REANA pipelines

The REANA science case focuses on enabling near-data computation—sending computational workflows to where large scientific datasets are stored, rather than transferring massive volumes of data to the researcher.

The use case demonstrates this concept through particle physics—a field that generates enormous data volumes—but it is applicable to many other domains, including astronomy and life sciences. The project aims to show how researchers can execute their analyses directly at the data source, using REANA—CERN’s Reproducible research data analysis platform—to manage containerized workflows across federated computing resources.

EOSC Federation scientific use case – Federating CERN’s REANA

Multi-centric validation of AI models for prostate-cancer screening

Advances in digital pathology are transforming cancer diagnosis by enabling high-resolution imaging of tissue samples and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for clinical decision support.

Prostate cancer, one of the most prevalent malignancies among men worldwide, represents a critical case for early and accurate diagnosis, as survival rates are strongly tied to timely detection and treatment. The objective of the multi-centric validation of AI models for prostate-cancer screening (MCVAL) use case, coordinated by the BBMRI-ERIC EOSC Node, is to create a secure environment in which AI models for prostate cancer screening can be validated using data from different hospitals. Rather than building new diagnostic systems from scratch, the project focuses on testing an existing model trained on whole-slide images and assessing how well it performs when applied to data processed elsewhere.

EOSC Federation scientific use case – MCVAL

Prostate cancer imaging data for AI training. Courtesy of BBMRI-ERIC

Other use cases

Italian Indico instance for federated agenda services, backup, and disaster recovery for EU Node Indico
Federated sensitive data analysis using interactive notebooks, HPC-enabled distributed resources, ISO-certified cloud regions

STATUS & TIMELINE

Status

Candidate EOSC Node (build-up phase)

EOSC Node | Italy Project Charter

Deliverables

Project Charter
Analysis of EOSC EU Node federation capabilities and build-up plan
Governance and Management documentation
Stakeholder and community engagement strategy
Interoperability policies and procedures
Node Core Services (AAI, registries, monitoring, accounting, helpdesk)
Use Case Reports (cross-node demonstrators with CERN and BBMRI)

Technical status

Completed

Federated AAI (eduGAIN, IDEM, LifeScience-AAI, EOSC AAI)
Onboarded service catalogues (national research products, service registries)
Application workflow management (REANA, Jupyter, notebooks)
Management system (ISO27001-certified, IT governance, FAIR-based policies)

Planned

Service monitoring
Service and research product accounting
Order management
Helpdesk

CAPABILITIES & ACCESS

COORDINATION

The Italian EOSC Node, operated by the Italian Research Center on High Performance Computing, Big Data and Quantum Computing (ICSC), federates resources from over 50 members, including national research infrastructures, ERICs, service providers, and e-Infrastructures.

FAIR data

The Italian EOSC Node provides access to repositories with Open Access publications and datasets, as well as other resource repositories. FAIR compliance is ensured via metadata registries, catalogues, and semantic interoperability policies.

Scientific use cases

Federating CERN’s REANA pipelines

The REANA science case focuses on enabling near-data computation—sending computational workflows to where large scientific datasets are stored, rather than transferring massive volumes of data to the researcher.

Multi-centric validation of AI models for prostate-cancer screening

Advances in digital pathology are transforming cancer diagnosis by enabling high-resolution imaging of tissue samples and the application of artificial intelligence (AI) for clinical decision support.

Other use cases

Status

Candidate EOSC Node (build-up phase)

Deliverables

Technical status

Completed

Planned

Interactions with other EOSC Nodes

The Italian EOSC Node collaborates with the EOSC Nodes listed below by providing cross-node REANA workflows, and sensitive data analysis environments.

How to access the Node

Rules of Participation

Access points

Node capabilities

Federated services

Data repositories

Compute and storage

VRE

File sync-and-share

Other

Coordinating organisation

Node organisation

Coordinator

Management

Contributing organisations

50+ Italian Research Performing Organisations, e-Infrastructures, and Research Infrastructures coordinated by members of ICSC, including, but not limited to CNR, INFN, GARR, and 20+ ERICs/ESFRIs.