The University of Trento ranks first in Italy in the category of medium-sized Italian universities in the field of research.

Through its Departments, Centers and related research groups and laboratories, it promotes, coordinates and manages research activities in areas ranging from industrial engineering to environmental resources, from materials to ICT, and from biology to neuroscience.

The Center for Integrative Biology (CIBIO) of the University of Trento aims to create a suitable environment for merging classical cellular and molecular biology approaches with the new powerful tools of synthetic biology.

The CIMeC deals with research in areas ranging from experimental psychology to methods of acquisition of neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience and animal cognition, alongside computational linguistics.

A Bioinformatics research center founded in 2005 by an agreement between the University of Trento and Microsoft Research, COSBI explores the connections between metabolic processes and nutrition, as well as cognitive mechanisms and pharmacology.

The C3A deals with scientific research and training in the areas of agriculture, food and the environment.