Inria Challenges: tackling major issues

Risky research has to be able to produce scientific results that will make a significant contribution to the digital society: furthering knowledge and perhaps inventing new disciplines in which digital technology will play a formative role.

Inria needs to build new fields of research and to explore new avenues, such as:

• Disruptive research, in areas where the applications are not necessarily known in advance;
• New scientific problems, renewed research themes and original avenues for scientific exploration into key subjects such as cybersecurity, responsible AI and applications for health and energy;
• New frontiers in the context of the environment, energy, transport, agriculture and the humanities;
• Interdisciplinarity and the hybridisation of skills between digital sciences and other disciplines, including humanities, particularly with regard to questions of digital trust, privacy or the loyalty of algorithms. 

Inria Challenges (formerly IPL) are used to launch ambitious research projects that are directly linked to the institute’s strategic plan and the benchmarks it contains. Often multidisciplinary, these challenges incorporate a range of different skills, the goal being to showcase the expertise of Inria researchers in relation to important challenges.

Inria Challenges operate as inter-team project teams. These are evaluated by their peers - generally experts from other countries - and run for a period of four years. Coordinated by a scientific leader, Inria Challenges are each structured around a given research subject, with a programme and clearly defined objectives. They bring together “grey matter” resources from different Inria project teams, in addition to external partners from the worlds of industry and academia.

These Challenges are used to develop a structure around major research subjects on which the institute is looking to place particular emphasis. They are launched in small numbers, with substantial resources allocated, and proposals put forward by directors of research. A first assessment will take place at the halfway stage, with a second, outlining the results obtained, taking place at the end of the project.

AVATAR: The next generation of our virtual selves in digital worlds

Project-teams:  GraphDECO, HYBRID, MIMETIC, MORPHEO, POTIOC, LOKI

Website of AVATAR

BetterNet: An Observatory to Measure and Improve Internet Service Access from User Experience

Project-teams:  DIANA, DIONYSOS, Inria Chile, MADYNESS, MUSE, SPIRALS

Partners: ENS-ERST, ip-label

Website of BetterNet

COSY : COntrol of SYnthetic microbial communities

Project-teams: Ibis, Biocore, Lifeware, Non-A

Website of COSY

DISCOVERY: DIstributed and COoperative management of Virtual Environments autonomousLY

Project-teams: ASAP, ASCOLA, AVALON, MYRIADS, KERDATA

Website of DISCOVERY

HAC SPECIS: High-performance Application and Computers, Studying PErformance and Correctness In Simulation

Project-teams: AVALON, HIEPACS, MEXICO, MYRIADS, SUMO, VERIDIS, POLARIS, STORM

Website of HAC-SPECIS

HPC-BigData: High Performance Computing and Big Data

Project-teams: DATAMOVE, KERDATA, SEQUEL, ZENITH, PARIETAL, TADAAM, HIEPACS, STORM, REALOPT, SIERRA, TAU

Website of HPC-BigData

HyAIAI: Hybrid Approaches for Interpretable AI

Project-teams: ACODAM, MAGNET, MULTISPEECH, ORPAILLEUR, SEQUEL, TAU

Website pf HyAIAI

ICODA: Data Journalism : knowledge-mediated Content and Data Interactive Analytics

Project-teams: GRAPHIK, ILDA, LINKMEDIA, CEDAR

Website of ICODA

ModeliScale:  Languages and compilation for Cyber-Physical System Design

Project-teams: BIPOP, HYCOMES, PARKAS

Partners: École polytechnique (LIX, équipe Cosynus), CNRS / Centrale-Supélec (L2S), université Grenoble-Alpes (Verimag, Tempo team)

Website of ModeliScale

Naviscope: Navigation and VIsualization of large data sets in live cell imaging and microSCOPy

Project-teams: AVIZ, BEAGLE, HYBRID, MORPHEME, PARIETAL, SERPICO, MOSAIC

Website of Naviscope

Neuromarkers: Design of imaging biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases for clinical trials and study of their genetic associations

Project-teams: ARAMIS, BONSAI, DYLISS, GENSCALE, XPOP

Partners: ICM (Brain and Spinal Cord Institute, www.icm-institute.org)

Website of Neuromakers

RIOT-FP: Reconcile IoT & Future-Proof Security

Project-teams: EVA, GRACE, INFINE, PROSECCO, TEA

Website of RIOT-FP

SPAI: Security by Program Analysis of the IoT

Project-teams: ANTIQUE, CELTIQUE, INDES, PRIVATICS, KAIROS

Website of SPAI

SURF: Sea Uncertainty Representation and Forecast

Project-teams: AIRSEA, FLUMINANCE, CARDAMON, ANGE, LEMON, DEFI, MINGUS

Website of SURF

ZEP: Zero-Power computing systems

Project-teams: ALF, CAIRN, CORSE, SOCRATE

Website of ZEP