Building digital sovereignty

Changed on 01/02/2024

Inria – a place for scientific vitality, where research is organized based on a project team model. Its mission is to accelerate, through digital research and innovation, the construction of France’s scientific, technological and industrial leadership in European dynamics.

L'Interface, le nouvel espace de démonstrateurs d'Inria dans le bâtiment Place : smart containers
© Inria / Photo Raphaël de Bengy

 

Inria provides scientists with a unique framework that promotes risk-taking, with respect for the long term and a 360° freedom of research. Increasingly in close interaction with other disciplines, Inria is anchored in the major university research campuses, whose development it supports, and in the industrial and entrepreneurial networks transformed by digital technology, at the heart of French Tech.

In order to meet its ambition to have an impact, the institute also supports entrepreneurs who have projects with a technological breakthrough (deeptech) so that they can realise the full potential of their research work.

Because talent is the mainspring of digital transformation, Inria recruits researchers, engineers, doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows at the highest academic level to its project teams, with a worldwide attraction policy. But it also recruits people for research support functions that represent the backbone of the institute, committed women and men who provide support for research and innovation every day.

Maintaining scientific excellence

Based on an agile model of "project teams", Inria encourages scientific risk-taking, particularly through interdisciplinarity and industrial partnerships, promoting the development of technologies that are often at the heart of scientific activity, and supporting entrepreneurial approaches. Its scientific policy must concentrate resources on actions of national scope and on strategic international partnerships, and strengthen its action in the European Research Area. Its attractiveness and evaluation policy must be consistent with these priorities.

Inria must know how to encourage the renewal of scientific themes and the emergence of new "disciplines" with a key role for digital technology as a lever for interdisciplinarity. To this end, the institute will set up an ambitious programme of "exploratory actions", aiming to multiply the number of projects they will support by a factor of 10, targeting them non-exclusively at young researchers, and leaving the format of support and duration of the projects free.

Being an innovation accelerator

To accelerate innovation with the aim of making an impact, Inria has a number of mechanisms in place:

  • the worldwide distribution of open source software that provides a technological infrastructure for innovative companies;
  • technological development at the heart of the scientific activity of the project-teams for which Inria supports this innovative activity so that they can have sustainable resources
  • the ability to develop a strategic dialogue with the major players in French and European industry and the world leaders who invest in France in order to contribute to the revitalisation and sustainability of a French and European industrial base through and in digital technology;
  • the implementation of a global and end-to-end system, called the Inria Startup Studio, to increase the creation of technological startups. These startups, which are a powerful vector of transfer, are notably led by young doctoral students, postdocs and engineers "passing through" Inria.

Commitment to national public policies

As a public research and innovation infrastructure, it is incumbent upon Inria to participate in the construction of France's digital sovereignty within the European dynamic, to meet the challenges of digital transformation in order to participate in the reasoned construction of a society of innovation and trust.

Inria contributes to the implementation of public policies with far-reaching implications, such as the National Artificial Intelligence Research Program, the development of a French ecosystem for digital security (partnership with ANSSI), the French Tech network (Inria runs a centre, French Tech Central at Station F, the world’s largest start-up incubator), the national  open science plan (with the software archive project Software Heritage) etc.

A driving force for digital culture education

In particular through Class’Code, an innovative training program developed for the education and training community, which has been available since the beginning of the 2016-2017 academic year. Class’Code was designed to provide facilitators with a base of knowledge and resources to introduce 8-14 year-old students to “computational thinking” in the form of discovery workshops and encourage them to consider careers in digital sciences and technology.

Through the Inria Learning Lab, Inria develops MOOCs to disseminate digital scientific knowledge and strengthen the dialogue between science and society.

An exceptional work environment to support collective vitality

At its 9 centres and 5 branches located on research university campuses and within digital ecosystems, Inria offers a stimulating work environment. As a socially-conscious and responsible institute, attentive to its employees and social issues, Inria encourages all of its employees to take part in debates on topics such as digital culture education, environmental impact, quality of work life, disability, ethics, gender equality, diversity and equal opportunity.

Sharing, challenges, creativity and engagement are all in a day’s work for Inria teams, who are committed to world-class research and to strengthening the impact of their work. Inria draws on a large number of talented individuals from over forty different fields to achieve its ambition: respond to the challenges of the digital transformation of society and economy through research and innovation.

ugénie Brasier et Raphaël James utilisent le mur d'écran Wilder
Plateforme Wilder - © Inria / Photo C. Morel

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For over fifty years, Inria has been a pioneer in supporting the development of the digital sciences in our society.