Regarding Computer Science Engineering, the Mobile and Distributed Systems Laboratory (MDSLab) group, part of University of Messina (Italy), conducts advanced ICT research studying parallel and distributed systems. In particular reseach topics include cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), ad-hoc networks, grid computing, middleware, modeling&performance evaluation, multimedia streaming, QoS management in wireless systems, RFID, security, trusted computing, sensor networks, software engineering, etc.  

The MDSLab research group has contributed to several research projects within the grid area: IST EUMEDGRID to create a grid infrastructure in the Mediterranean area, TRIGRID to create a grid infrastructure in Sicily to provide high computing services to the whole research community, and PI2S2 to implement a regional-distributed laboratory for virtual organisations based on grid.

The University of Messina joined the FP7 European Project RESERVOIR (2007) focusing on virtualized datacenters, one of the first intitiatives in the field of cloud computing, the FP7 European Project VISIONCLOUD (2010), focused on advantage cloud storage systems, the  FP7 European Project CLOUDWAVE (2013) focusing on the dynamic deployment of cloud services, the FP7 European Project FrontierCities (2014) fousing on promoting the FIWARE technology in the field of smart modility, the H2020 European Project BEACON (2015) focusing on federated cloud networking services.