It is already 2 weeks since I came back to Italy but I haven’t had time to realize it.
I have spent the past 3 months at the Computer Science department of University of Maryland and it was a very useful and interesting period.

It was also my first time in USA. The Univ of Maryland is a wonderful place for doing research.
It is difficult to compare it with anything in Italy. I believe the Univ of Trento where I’m doing the PhD in Information and Communication Technologies is one of the best in Italy [as statistics (in Italian) confirm]. Anyway it is difficult to have a good national research if the miserabile Italian government invests only 1% of GDP in Research.
By the way, what I especially liked of UMD is:
1. Every workgroup has a weekly meeting in which one member of the group presents a paper (not necessarily one of her papers).
2. CS department offers a weekly coffee break: the idea is you go there, have a coffee and a cookie and chat with your collegues. This is very good for cross-fertilization and collaboration.
3. Usually 30 minutes before a talk there is coffee break where you can talk with the speaker and other people.
4. Sometimes after a talk there is a meeting with the speaker for everyone is interested.
Yeah, I know, it seems being a researcher is just having coffee with people…