General presentation

INRIA (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) is a French public-sector scientific and technological institute under the responsibility of the Ministry for Research and the Ministry of Industry.

Headquartered at Rocquencourt near Versailles in France, INRIA has five research centers at : Grenoble, Nancy-Metz, Rennes, Rocquencourt, and Sophia-Antipolis (near Nice).

INRIA' s missions are:

• basic and applied research,
• design of experimental systems,
• technology transfer,
• knowledge transfer,
• international scientific exchanges,
• contribution to international cooperation programs,
• scientific assessments,
• contribution to standardization.

INRIA employs over 1 300 persons including 1 000 scientists, among which 340 tenure positions, 330 scholars and trainees, 180 researchers from public laboratories, 50 engineers from industry, 100 visiting researchers from abroad. The research carried out at INRIA is mainly concerned with software and control engineering. This research brings together experts from the fields of applied mathematics, control, signal processing and computer science within the framework of 6 research programs.

Its budget is roughly 70 Mecus, 20%of which comes from contracts, royalties and sales. Industrial relations are strategic for INRIA. The Institute's initiatives are directed towards:

• Designing tomorrow's products through collaborative research contracts with industrial partners (more than 200 contracts with industry and potential users each year), and a growing participation in the ESPRIT and EUREKA programs (86 ESPRIT projects and 5 EUREKA projects since 1984).

• Getting the products onto the market through software houses and technology companies (LE-LISP, ESTEREL, CAML, CHORUS, GRIF, SMECI...) .

• Promoting the transfer of advanced knowledge (receiving engineers from industry and encouraging the movement of researchers towards industry).

• Stimulating the creation of spin-off companies and subsidiaries by former INRIA researchers and engineers (4 Subsidiaries: ILOG, SIMULOG, O2 Technology, CONNEXITE and 15 spin-off companies created since 1984).

INRIA strongly believes in the necessity of a strong European Scientific Community. In that spirit, INRIA is a member of ERCIM (European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics) together with CWI in Netherlands, GMD in Germany, RAL in Great Britain, INESC in Portugal and CNR in Italy. Outside Europe, multiple relations exist, involving the United States, Japan and many more countries.