INRIA, gateway to a complex but rich research system
By: Jean-Fabrice Delaye
01 June 2009
Frances's premier institute for computer science is now developing joint laboratories with international companies, including Microsoft, to tackle some of the key challenges in the field.
Jean Ponce: “This is pretty fundamental research.”
Founded in 1967, INRIA, the French national institute for research in computer science and control now combines state research priorities and innovation. Where once it saw its role as providing R&D and talent to national champions such as Bull, the institute is now developing strategic relations and common labs with international companies such as Microsoft. With its eight regional centres, it is also increasing its support to SMEs in the extensive French network of clusters and beyond.
The joint lab with Microsoft – the Microsoft Research- INRIA Joint Centre – was inaugurated in 2007 on the Plateau de Saclay, near the campus of INRIA Saclay and three other top academic institutions, the University of Orsay, the Ecole Polytechnique and Supelec. It works on two main streams: software security and trustworthy computing; and computational sciences and scientific information interaction. The Centre currently links more than 30 researchers from INRIA and other French institutions with 14 researchers from Microsoft.
“Both Microsoft Research and INRIA have worldleading computer-science research laboratories,” notes Andrew Herbert, Microsoft distinguished engineer and managing director of Microsoft Research Cambridge. “By combining our strengths, we have been able to tackle some of the most significant challenges in computer science.”
“The results are already impressive,” says Michel Cosnard, chairman and CEO of INRIA. “But what is most impressive is the quality of the relationships between Microsoft Research and INRIA researchers: full respect, trust, and confidence.”
INRIA itself reports to two masters – the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Industry – so it is no surprise that it has always been focused on technology transfer and applications. The institute was one of the first French research bodies to systematise technology transfer in 1984, and since then its researchers have created 93 start-ups – 70 of them still successfully in business like Trusted Logic and Esterel Technologies.
Educating about 1,000 PhD level students among the 3,000 scientists active in the INRIA project teams (sometimes belonging to other public research organisations such as partner universities) INRIA is now a flexible organisation oriented to software. Its research is organised around 173 project teams, committing an average of 20 members each on eight-year programmes that are evaluated halfway through their life. It has also filed 230 patents, while its contract funding has increased to 20 per cent of its annual budget of €200 million.
INRIA also focuses on fundamental research. For example, Ecole National Supérieure (ENS) professor Jean Ponce is pursuing various projects in computer vision, with one on 3-D imaging of urban archaeological sites, another on the environmental analysis of satellite images and another to extract social patterns from videos. “That is pretty fundamental research,” explains Ponce. “But the fact we have already received Microsoft INRIA labs support last October is also a testimony that such research may find applications.”
After 20 years in the US, Ponce, who is structuring its projects between ENS–INRIA and France's main government- funded research organisation, CNRS, admits that the French research system can appear complex. “But while in the US research is often carried out by one professor with their students, the French system has the advantage of being able to pool multidisciplinary talents at top level.” Tapping into such pools through its project team-based organisational model, INRIA aims to be France's gateway of choice for computer science research.