Jean-Yves Berthou

Director of the Inria Saclay Centre
Portrait Jean-Yves Berthou
© Inria / Photo S. Erôme - Signatures

Jean-Yves Berthou, appointed by Bruno Sportisse, took over as director of the Inria Saclay-Île-de-France research centre on 15 February 2019.

With a PhD in information technology, Jean-Yves is an academic and trained researcher in the field of simulation and high performance scientific computing. He spent about ten years in public research organisations and nearly 20 years in industry at EDF, mainly in R&D. He has spent the last four years setting up a dynamic approach to innovation in the transformation and operational efficiency department of EDF, which in practical terms has led to the industrialisation of over 250 innovations and some sixty partnership contracts with start-ups.

From 2011 to 2015, Jean-Yves was head of the digital and mathematics department (NuMa) at the French National Research Agency (ANR), in charge of organising the selection, financing and monitoring of research projects as well as setting up European and international collaborations.

From 1997 to 2011, he occupied a variety of posts in the research department of EDF, EDF R&D. He was in turn a researcher, project leader and manager before becoming head of the Simulation programme and the Information Technologies programme of EDF R&D. These different missions naturally led him to work with Inria, and in particular he was a member of the Institute's evaluation committee between 2008 and 2011.

For 15 years, Jean-Yves was regularly called upon by the European Commission for expert assignments, in particular in the fields of high performance computing, open science or research and innovation strategy.