The Statute and the Agreement establishing ICRANet were signed on March 19, 2003, and they were recognized in the same year by the Republic of Armenia and the Vatican City State.

Marcel Grossmann of the University of Zurich who had a deep knowledge of the Italian school of geometry and who was close to Einstein introduced to him these concepts.

Remo Ruffini and Abdus Salam in 1975 established the Marcel Grossmann meetings (MG) on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theories,[6] which take place every three years in different countries, gathering more than 1000 researchers.

Under the initiative of the United Nations and UNESCO, 2015 was declared the International Year of Light, and it represented the centenary of the formulation of the equations of general relativity by Albert Einstein, and the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of relativistic astrophysics.

The Scientific Committee in 2019 consists of:[26] Prof. Narek Sahakyan (Armenia), Dr. Barres de Almeida Ulisses (Brazil), Dr. Carlo Luciano Bianco (ICRA), Prof. Massimo Della Valle (Italy), Prof. John Mester (Stanford University), Prof. Chris Fryer (University of Arizona) and Dr. Gabriele Gionti (Vatican City State).

The Faculty[27] in 2019 consists of Professors Ulisses Barres de Almeida, Vladimir Belinski, Carlo Luciano Bianco, Donato Bini, Pascal Chardonnet, Christian Cherubini, Filippi Simonetta, Robert Jantzen, Roy Patrick Kerr, Hans Ohanian, Giovanni Pisani, Brian Mathew Punsly, Jorge Rueda, Remo Ruffini, Gregory Vereshchagin, and She-Sheng Xue, and is supported by an Adjunct Faculty[28] made up of more than 30 internationally renowned scientists participating in ICRANet activities, and between eighty "Lecturers"[29] and "Visiting Professors".

Scientific activities in Pescara center include the fundamental research on early cosmology by the Russian school guided by Vladimir Belinski.

Activities of the ICRANet Seat at Villa Ratti in Nice include the coordination of the IRAP PhD program, as well as scientific activities connected with the ultra high energy observations by the University of Savoy and the VLT observations performed by the Côte d’Azur Observatory, which involve the thesis works of IRAP PhD students.

Since January 2014, the ICRANet Center in Yerevan[36] has been established at the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia,[37] at Marshall Baghramian Avenue, 24a.

The Seat Agreement has been signed in Rome on February 14, 2015, by the director of ICRANet, Remo Ruffini and the Ambassador of Armenia in Italy, Mr. Sargis Ghazaryan.

In Armenia, the ICRANet center collaborates with other scientific institutions from the Academy and Universities, and provides to organize joint international meetings and workshops, summer schools for PhD students and mobility programs for scientists in the field of Astrophysics.

[39][40] The Seat of ICRANet in Rio de Janeiro has been established initially on the premises granted by CBPF, with the possible expansion to the Cassino da Urca.

It also includes the organization of joint international conferences and workshops, institutional exchanges for students, researchers and faculty members.

The first Chairman of the ICRANet Steering Committee Fang Li-Zhi developed the collaboration with the Physics Department of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Program, IRAP-PhD, the first joint PhD astrophysics program with: ASI - Italian Space Agency (Italy); Bremen University (Germany); Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Germany); CAPES - Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (Brazil); CBPF - Brazilian Centre for Physics Research (Brazil); CNR - National Research Council (Italy); FAPERJ -Foundation "Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro" (Brazil); ICRA - International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (Italy); ICTP - Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (Italy); IHES - Institut Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (France); Indian centre for space physics (India); INFN - National Institute for Nuclear Physics (Italy); NAS RA - Armenian National Academy of Sciences (Armenia); Nice University Sophia Antipolis (France); Observatory of the Côte d'Azur (France); Rome University - “Sapienza” (Italy); Savoy University (France); TWAS - Academy of sciences for the developing world; UAM - Metropolitan Autonomous University (Mexico); UNIFE - University of Ferrara (Italy).

By 2019, 122 students were enrolled in the IRAP PhD program:[49] 1 from Albania, 4 from Argentina, 8 from Armenia, 1 from Austria, 2 from Belarus, 16 from Brazil, 5 from China, 9 from Colombia, 3 from Croatia, 5 from France, 5 from Germany 7 from India, 2 from Iran, 38 from Italy 2 from Kazakhstan, 1 from Lebanon, 1 from Mexico, 1 from Pakistan, 4 from Russia, 1 from Serbia, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Switzerland, 1 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from Taiwan and 1 from Turkey.

The 2nd Galileo - Xu Guangqi meeting took place in Hanbury Botanic Gardens (Ventimiglia, Italy) and Villa Ratti (Nice, France) in 2010.

[62] Invited lectures were delivered by Professors Abhay Ashtekar, Thomas Thiemann, Gerard 't Hooft and Hagen Kleinert.

ICRANet co-organizes with ICRA Joint Astrophysics Seminar[68] at the Department of Physics of University "La Sapienza" in Rome.

A special attention will be paid to the achievement and the complete respect of the levels defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA).

In addition to these specific objectives, BSDC will promote technical seminars, annual workshops and it will assure a plan of scientific divulgation and popularization of science with the aim of the understanding of the Universe.