Donatella Castelli has been a member of the research staff of the "Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie della Informazione "A. Faedo"(ISTI) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) since 1987. Here she has worked on formal aspects of database modelling and database design. Since 1997 she has been a member of the Multimedia Networked Information System Laboratory. Since then she has conducted research on digital libraries participating actively in several EU projects on Digital Libraries. At present, she is the scientific director of the EU IST VI FP Integrated Project "A DIgital Library test-bed Infrastructure on Grid ENabled Technology - DILIGENT" and she leads the activity "A Reference Model for Digital Library Management Systems" of the DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries.

She has co-designed the ERCIM Technical Reference Digital Library (ETRDL) and the OpenDLib (http://www.opendlib.com) digital library service system. Her current research interests include Metadata Models and Digital Libraries systems.