For the past four decades the Clodomiro Picado Institute has been devoted to the research of ophidism, an area where it has received recognition on a national and international level.  
Its main objective is to develop new knowledge from scientific studies in the fields of biology and toxinology of toxin-producing microorganisms and venomous animals, as well as in other biomedical and biotechnological research areas related to the mission of the Institute.

The research projects are developed by researchers with academic backgrounds in the fields of Herpetology, Microbiology, Cellular and Molecular Biology, Immunology, Biochemistry, and Biotechnology.

These researchers combine their research with teaching activities in graduate and postgraduate programs at the University of Costa Rica. The knowledge generated is shared with the national and international scientific community through publications in specialized journals and participations in symposiums, seminars, workshops, and congresses, in the country and abroad. 

The researches carried out at the Clodomiro Picado Institute (CPI) have opened doors to establish fruitful collaborations with research groups from Brazil, United States, Sweden, Denmark, United Kingdom, Spain, Colombia, France, Israel, Germany, Italy, Guatemala, Mexico, Nigeria, Argentina, Japan, Australia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Papua New Guinea. 

The contributions of the CPI to the technological-scientific knowledge have been shared in thousands of scientific publications, most of them in prestigious international journals included in the “mainstream science” indexes (see List of CPI Publications), which means a major achievement for an institute from a developing country. The annual number of publications has been characterized by a constant quantitative growth. 

Scientific Articles Published Under the Institutional Affiliation of the CPI in International Journals Covered by the Web of Science® (Thomson Reuters) from 1999 to 2016 (August 31st).