And also…

At the end of May, after six years in construction and over 14 days being transported, the largest human MRI scanner[i] - the Iseult project - arrived at the Neurospin research centre in Saclay. Equipped with the most powerful magnet in the world, generating a record magnetic field of 11.7 teslas[ii], this MRI will be able to explore the human brain with a hitherto unparalleled level of precision. The Parietal project team from the Inria Saclay - Île-de-France centre, a joint team with the CEA[iii] and located at the NeuroSpin research centre will, a few months from now, be able to work on this behemoth of technologies and push their studies of the brain even further.

David Marcum, Professor at Mississippi State University (MSU), has been hired by Inria Saclay – Île-de-France research center within the framework of the International Chair Program. David Marcum joined the center in the beginning of May 2017 to strengthen his collaboration with Gamma3 project-team and work on "Unstructured Mesh Generation".

On 7 June, Laurent Massoulié, head of the Infine team at the Inria Saclay – Île-de-France Research Centre and Director of the Microsoft Research - Inria Joint Centre, received the Grand Prix Scientifique Cino Del Duca 2017 , awarded by the French Academy of Sciences. He has won this prestigious science prize for his project on Social Information Networks.

On 1 December 2016, at the Inria Saclay – Île-de-France research centre, RandOpt, was created: a new joint team with CMAP specialised in RANDomized OPTimisation. After several years of close collaboration, Anne Auger, Nikolaus Hansen and Dimo Brockhoff seized the obvious opportunity to create RandOpt together: the logical continuation of the work carried out within the project teams TAO (for Anne Auger and Nikolaus Hansen) and Dolphin (for Dimo Brockhoff). 

Fujitsu plans to invest €50 million in France to develop its competence in data processing and artificial intelligence. The major Japanese firm is seeking to work with Inria's researchers, starting with the Datashape team.

Friday 17 March 2017 saw the official launch of InBio, a joint exploratory effort between Inria and Institut Pasteur hosted by the Lifeware team (Inria Saclay – Île-de-France).

Either side of Grégory Batt, member of the Lifeware team and now also manager of InBio, are Christian Bréchot, CEO of Institut Pasteur and Eric Horlait, deputy CEO in charge of technology transfer and industrial partnerships at Inria, who signed the agreement launching this new structure, the goal of which is to develop experimental and IT methods to help to understand how living systems function at cell level.

Whether they are researchers, managers, senior lecturers, heads of department, PhD students, communications officers, teachers, administrative assistants...they all have something in common: working towards furthering research. And, this year, on International Women's Day, the Inria Saclay – Île-de-France research centre has decided to highlight some of these women who carry out and support the research of today. 

Last February, Pierre Karpman, a former PhD student of the Grace team at Inria Saclay - Île-de-France research centre, and his team caused a collision between two PDF files and proved the obsolescence of the SHA-1 hash standard.

Inria plays a key role in the "France Intelligence Artificielle" initiative (#FranceIA) launched on 20 January by Thierry Mandon and Axelle Lemaire. The Institute's participation in the strategic committee and in several working groups confirms its position as an expert on this subject. Meeting with Bertrand Braunschweig.

On 1 February InBio was created, the result of the collaboration between the Inria Saclay - Île-de-France research centre and the Institut Pasteur. Grégory Batt becomes the head of this exploratory action hosted by the Lifeware team and presents his project: automating the discovery process in biology.