Management team

Michel Cosnard, Chairman and CEO of Inria

Michel Cosnard © INRIA / Photo C. Dupont Michel Cosnard © Inria / Photo C. Dupont

Michel Cosnard is Chairman of the board of directors of Inria. CEO of Inria since May 2006, he was reappointed for a new four-year term in May 2010. The Chairman also performs the duties of CEO, as provided for in the institute’s internal regulations.

Michel Cosnard is a globally recognised specialist in algorithmics, particularly in the field of design and analysis of parallel algorithms and computation on grids. He has also worked on the complexity of networks of automatons and neurons. He is the author of around a hundred publications in the field's top international journals. He has written two books and supervised 27 theses. As a scientist, he has been awarded the following prizes: the Alfred Verdaguer Prize by the Academy of Sciences (1994), the Silver Core by IFIP (1995), and the Charles Babbage Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society (2003). Michel Cosnard is a knight of the French Legion of Honour (2007) and has an honorary degree from the Polytechnique de Mons faculty (Belgium).

Born in 1952, Michel Cosnard obtained an engineering degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from ENSIMAG, a Master's degree in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University (USA), and his State doctorate in Computer Science from the Université de Grenoble.

He joined CNRS as a researcher in 1979 and was appointed to the position of professor in computer science at the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon in 1987. He then created the Parallel Computing Laboratory (LIP), which he directed until August 1997. From September 1997 to December 2000, he was the director of the Inria Lorraine research unit and LORIA (Lorraine Laboratory of Computer Science Research and Applications). From June 2001 to December 2003, he was the director of the Inria Sophia Antipolis research unit and Professor at the Ecole polytechnique at the Université de Nice - Sophia Antipolis. From December 2003 to May 2004, he held the office of Chairman and CEO of Inria. Then, from June 2004 until his appointment as Chairman and CEO of the institute in 2006, he again directed the Sophia Antipolis research unit. Michel Cosnard is also Chairman of the board of directors of Inria-Transfert.

From 2001 to 2003, he was the director of the "Globalization of Computing Resources and Data (GRID)" Concerted Action Incentive of the Ministry of Research. From 2003 to 2004, he was the Director of the EEIG ERCIM. From 2004 to 2006, he chaired the Teaching and Research Centre of Sophia Antipolis - Nice (PERSAN) and actively participated in the creation of the "Solutions Communicantes Sécurisées" (Secure Solutions for Communication) global competitiveness cluster. He was a member of the François d'Aubert work group on partnership between research bodies (December 2007 to March 2008). Member of ISTAG (Information Society Technologies Advisory Group).

Michel Cosnard has been Chairman of the contactless technologies innovation centre - EuraRFID (CITC - EuraRFID) since January 2009. At the request of Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Secretary of State of digital economy, he works within the Net Neutrality expert group, established on 24 February 2010.

Since March 2010, Michel Cosnard has been Chairman of the coordination committee of Allistene, the Alliance of Digital Sciences and Technologies, launched on 17 December 2009, by Valérie Pécresse, minister for Higher Education and Research. After serving as a director of the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, Michel Cosnard is currently a director of the École normale supérieure de Cachan, the ANR (the French National Research Agency), and the EEIG ERCIM.

Keywords: Président Organization Michel Cosnard