By developing prestigious partnerships over the five continents with the biggest digital technology players, Inria nurtures talent and partnership research.
A resolutely European institute that is open to the world, Inria welcomes researchers of over 100 different nationalities to its project teams, and over half of its researchers are foreign. In 2016, the institute strengthened its international collaborative strategy by backing 23 new associate teams (90 in all), in Europe in particular, and by welcoming numerous world-renowned researchers such as Fredo Durant (MIT), Kim Larsen (CISS), Marcelo Wanderley (McGill) and Miguel Anjos (École Polytechnique de Montréal).
In Europe.
With six new Starting Grants (young researcher), one
Consolidator Grant (experienced researcher), and two
Proof of Concepts, Inria is confirming its outstanding results at the ERC (European Research Council).
Moreover, the principle of associate teams has been extended to Europe, giving rise to several collaborations such as the
Links team between the Inria Lille – Nord Europe centre and Oxford.
Inria is developing long-term collaborations with top-level international establishments: for the 70th anniversary of the CWI (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica) research centre in Amsterdam, an
Inria International Lab (IIL) was set up between the two institutes. For its part,
the agreement between the Wolfgang Pauli Institute (WPI) and Inria marked the strengthening of a French-Austrian cooperation that will further interdisciplinarity.
Committed to the creation of a true European policy on cybersecurity, Inria is
founder member of ECSO (European Cyber Security Organisation), an association that is part of the European research and innovation programme Horizon 2020. Within this programme, Inria ensures the coordination of European projects such as the
STAMP consortium, whose aim is to make the DevOps software development methodology more secure for European businesses, and the
Nextleap project which, within a multidisciplinary team, builds the security protocols of tomorrow for messaging and identity applications.
In North America.
Inria is at the heart of Silicon Valley, in particular with its 15 associate teams at UC Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of Southern California. On June 8th and 9th, the institute organised
the 6th Inria@SiliconValley workshop (BIS'2016) at the Paris research centre, including an international conference day (Digital for Health), organised as part of the “Futur en Seine” technology festival. A second workshop entitled "Next-Generation Internet of Things" was co-organised with the University of Southern California (Los Angeles) on March 31st and April 1st.
Inria@SiliconValley had four Inria International Chairs in 2016:
Victor Vianu (UC San Diego),
John Cany (Berkeley),
Mathieu Desbrun (CalTech)
and
Deb Agarwal (Lawrence Berkeley Lab), and also supported the stays of
two post-doctoral researchers Nina Miolane and Ziran Zhang, who were hosted by Stanford and Berkeley respectively.
The institute supports the transfer of results and expertise to businesses, but also ensures their establishment in a world market: as a result,
five Inria start-ups were selected by the NETVA 2016 programme. Sponsored by the science and technology departments of the French embassies in the USA and Canada, NETVA helps entrepreneurs in their search for contacts and the necessary tools to penetrate the North American market.
In South America.
By putting modern societal issues at the heart of its research–in particular reflections on climate change–Inria has been able to develop its expertise in Argentina through Thomas Watteyne's project, "Save the peaches ", which is working on the prediction of frost events in fruit tree farming. It is one of the eight
STIC-AmSud regional projects backed by the institute in 2016.
Inria has supported 11 associate teams co-financed by Brazil, five STIC-AmSud projects and one MATH-AmSud project with its partners. Confirming a strong international network, the European project
HPC4E (High Performance Computing for Energy) supported by Inria has also welcomed Brazil into its fold.
The
Inria Chile International Centre of Excellence (CEI) continued, in 2016, to define a strong, high-impact industrial transfer and innovation strategy, thanks to the integration of various technologies developed by its project teams. As a result, Inria Chile participated in two technology transfer centres in Chile –Hubtec and KnowHub - in collaboration with local universities and organisations such as the Innovation Centre UC Anacleto Angelini. Numerous projects have been undertaken this year, including the Tsunami Lab, The Drop Watcher, and an unprecedented initiative resulting from the collaboration between the French embassy in Chile, the
Institut français in Chile and Inria Chile: an interactive visualisation platform enabling the discovery and consultation of all of the academic-scientific collaborations that exist between the two countries.
In Africa.
The 13th edition of
CARI (African Conference on Research in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics) was held in Hammamet (Tunisia). It was preceded, for the first time, by a CIMPA (International Centre for Pure and Applied Mathematics) Research School on "Mathematics for Biology". Three Inria project teams were represented at the conference: Nejib Zemzemi (Carmen project team), Nicolas Champagnat (Tosca project team) and Fabien Campillo (MathNeuro project team) gave lectures as part of the CIMPA School.
The journal ARIMA, the result of a North-South scientific collaboration lasting over 20 years in the wake of the CARI activities, has been transferred to the
Episciences platform. It enables the research results from these original cooperations in the digital sciences and applied mathematics to be put in the spotlight.
In Asia.
2016 was also the year for strengthening both the co-financing agreements of the associate teams in Asia and scientific cooperations: as a result, the agreements with MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology) in Taiwan and the DST (Department of Science and Technology), managed in India by CEFIPRA–with which the CNRS is also associated–have been renewed.
Inria and the East China Normal University formalised their participation in JIRLOTS, the international laboratory whose aim is to develop methods and tools for the design of proven and certified software, allowing for the implementation of safe and secure systems.
The institute also consolidated its presence in Asia with the participation of Inria project teams in the
STIC/Bio-Asia regional seminar, dedicated to themes as diverse as green smart cities, renewable energies, health and cybersecurity. On this theme of cybersecurity, Inria has forged closer scientific links with Japan as part of the French-Japanese Innovation Year.