Inria for National Institute for Research in Digital Sciences and Technologies. In 1983, with six teams of researchers and around forty people, the third Inria research center was created in the Sophia Antipolis technology park, which was still only a vast scrubland.
Its name: Inria Sophia Antipolis Méditerranée. His mission? Develop and promote research in information and communication sciences and techniques.
Forty years later, some six hundred people, including more than five hundred researchers of fifty nationalities, divided into thirty-seven teams, are working to push ever further the frontiers of digital science and technology. His story is intertwined with that “computer science and French applied mathematics, what we call digital today”explains Bruno Sportisse, CEO of Inria who traveled to the South for the occasion.
Firsts and technology transfer
Fluid mechanics, life modeling, photonics, computer graphics, robotics and automation… We owe many innovations to Inria Sophia scientists. In 1987, the first Internet connection from France to the United States was established from the Inria Sophia site. And if certain World Wide Web technologies such as HTML5, HTML, CSS, PNG, etc. are compatible, it is because the European branch of the W3C, a web standardization organization, was created in 1995 at Inria Sophia, which is now one of them. still a founding member today.
In 2004, it was also the first real-scale experiment on the port of Antibes with Cybercars, new fully automated vehicles in an urban network…
Without forgetting the creation of numerous startups, spin-offs of technologies developed at Inria Sophia and whose fields of application range from the agriculture of the future, to technologies for health through the industry of tomorrow or even new forms of mobility. We can cite the management software publisher Ilog – since bought by IBM –, the car-sharing specialist Vulog but also Therapixel, an expert in artificial intelligence applied to medical imaging, Geometry Factory, a startup which creates modular geometric algorithms for industry or Inalve which produces microalgae on biofilm.
Inria Sophia is also a founding member of the SophiaTech Campus which opened in 2012, a partner of the Idex Jedi excellence initiative of the Côte d’Azur University and co-founder of the interdisciplinary artificial intelligence institute 3IA Côte d’Azur in 2019…
Future
If success has been achieved, it is because the center has been able to embrace the vision of cross-fertilization dear to Senator Pierre Laffitte. “The ecosystem – whether with businesses, local authorities, academic partners – has always been a key word”continues Bruno Sportisse.
Since 2021, momentum has accelerated with the strategic partnership between Inria and Université Côte d’Azur which gave birth to the Inria Center at Université Côte d’Azur. “We have changed the paradigm of operating in very French silos, confirms Jeanick Brisswalter, president of Université Côte d’Azur. The example of cross-fertilization of Sophia Antipolis is a good model to duplicate because it allows us to create research and innovation ecosystems that we have managed to extend to the territory. Sophia was a kind of benchmark and Inria was at the heart of it, a driving force behind this dynamic.”
“The University and Inria are crucibles in which researchers rub shoulders”adds Maureen Clerc, director of the Sophia Antipolis center.
The objective of this partnership is to develop a shared strategy and common implementation to improve the international attractiveness of the site for the benefit of teaching, research and innovation… and the creation of jobs on the Riviera territory.
The future also involves the extension of the site which “is written with Université Côte d’Azur; an integrated digital campus project that we are currently building”, assures Jeanick Brisswalter. And who is “major for digital and the visibility it needs, completes Maureen Clerc. We need to decompartmentalize the way we work in an urban planning manner to have something coherent and shared.”
So that the forty years of scientific adventures experienced by men and women can continue for a long time in the same spirit of cross-fertilization.