The first researchers were hired, with direct call, from CERN (Pietro Zanarini), the University of Chicago (Gianluigi Zanetti), Princeton (Kanthan Pillay), the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Sandro Massidda), IBM of Kingston, New York (Giorgina Corongiu and Lorenzo Pisani), Cerfacs of Toulouse (Riccardo Scateni), the University of Konstanz (Bruno D’Aguanno), CNR of Milan, and the Institute for Machine Tools - Istituto Macchine Utensili (Piero Pili).
In 1991 the first recruitment call was launched, to fill 40 vacancies for new graduates in scientific disciplines. More than 800 applications were received. The examination panel (Paolo Zanella, Tarcisio Teofilatto, Pietro Zanarini and Gianluigi Zanetti) interviewed 300 candidates.
The following were selected: Gianluigi Alari, Cosimo Aragonese, Maurizio Barbato, Cristiano Berinini, Gabriella Cabitza, Luigi Filippini, David Greco, Anna Innocenti, Giuditta Lecca, Andrea Ottavio Leone, Daniela Lera, Paolo Malara, Paola Mastromarino, Giovanni Murgia, Laura Muscas, Luigi Niolu, Roberto Orrù, Gavino Paddeu, Maria Pia Pascarella, Luca Paglieri, Massimo Pisu, Patrizio Severino and Proto Tilocca.
The first administrative employees were: Martina Munzittu, Alessandro Milletti, Carmela Lai, Fernando Rosa and Elisabetta Muscas.
