Since its establishment, the SDR Center has imagined its mission as a meeting place between scientific knowledge in the field of design-driven research and the entrepreneurial, institutional and professional system. Furthermore, the Center was born with the need to establish in Sapienza a place of multidisciplinary convergence on Design, seizing, since then, the opportunities that design-driven research offers not only to the discipline of design itself but also to other disciplines. design, such as architecture and engineering, as well as those of a humanistic nature and hard sciences.
This mission made the Center not only a novelty for the university reality of Sapienza University of Rome but unique in the national panorama.
Therefore, during the first three years (2012-2014) the SDR center spent its energies above all in the actions of strengthening the multidisciplinary research capacity and in the refinement of the body of competence through the preparation of Projects for Competitive Calls at national level and Regional and collaboration in research in place within the relevant Departments in the formula of convergence of complementary skills. (See in this sense the Report prepared for the Renewal in the second three-year period).
In the transition to the second three-year period, the need to concentrate the skills and mission of the SDR Center was assessed for a more targeted response to the 'research market' and the development opportunities that it currently offers.
The activities of the 2015-2017 three-year period (as described in the previous Reports for the financial year 2016 and the financial year 2017) were aimed at setting up research opportunities by responding to competitive calls at national and international level ( in total, for the years 2016 and 2017, the preparation of 7 Research Projects) and the organization of internal and external meetings for the identification of new virtuous research channels.
From these experiences it was possible to ascertain that the disciplinary contributions that converge in the SDR Center - from the most typical of the project of artifacts to those of the "belt" of physical and virtual representation, of materials technology and production processes, of information technologies - they are widely experienced in research, especially international, and demonstrate the disciplinary richness of Design in its broad sense, making it recognized as one of the fundamental Key-Knowledge for the construction and development of future societies.
Even today, the SDR Center maintains its uniqueness both on the regional and national territory.
The Center has shown that it grasps an evident need for multidisciplinary research which, alongside the more disciplinary one of the Departments, responds to the research demand expressed both by the National and European Calls, as well as by that of public and private subjects (Institutions and Companies).

The Research Lines of the Center, also in response to new members, are substantiated in 3 axes:

1. Design for Industry 4.0 and Made in Italy

The applicative themes of this Research Line concern experimentations of and for innovation processes that involve both production and consumption enabled by Information Technologies, managed according to Design Thinking approaches and developed thanks to advanced Manufacturing technologies. In particular, the Center focuses on innovation processes in favor of the Made in Italy industrial sectors.
The competences expressed by the members of the Departments of:
- Design, History, Architectural Restoration
- Computer, Automation and Management Engineering
- Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
- Structural and Geotechnical Engineering
 - Management
- Planning, Design, Architecture Technology

2. Design for Digital Society and Social Innovation

Experiments concerning Social Innovation processes fall within this Research Line, where the aim is the development of new services that enable users in different sectors of the social and collective view. In particular, the Center has opened a particular focus on the topics of Health-care, Social Inclusion, Social Awareness.
The competences expressed by the members of the Departments of:
- Computer, Automation and Management Engineering
- Management
- Planning, Design, Architecture Technology
- Psychology of development and socialization processes

3. Design for Cultural Experience

The themes inherent to this Research Line concern the experimentation of new services and products intended for the fruition of cultural contents and for the promotion of the artistic / cultural heritage of local contexts. In this sense, the Center has launched a particular observatory on the dynamics of use and enhancement of architectural and archaeological contexts