Inria has created its Covid-19 Mission
Date:
Changed on 15/05/2020
Inria is a public research institute, whose responsibility is to explore upstream research paths with our scientific, technological and industrial partners. Around 20% of the institute's research teams are already working on health-related topics on a daily basis. It is therefore natural for the Institute to mobilize in the fight against the Covid-19 epidemic, where our skills can be useful, on operational, technological or scientific fronts.
In this context, on 21 March last, Inria set up a system called the Inria Covid-19 Mission, the aim of which is to mobilize our resources for the short-term fight against the virus. There is a lot of good will to participate now in the short-term fight against the Covid-19. This mission, placed under the authority of Inria's General Management, coordinates the mobilization of the institute's resources in close collaboration with all ministerial and governmental initiatives to mobilize research (notably the CARE committee, in which the Inria is represented by Bertrand Thirion). It enables, on the one hand, healthcare institutions to send their potential needs in the field of digital sciences and technologies to Inria project teams via the online platform and, on the other hand, to support the deployment of initiatives proposed by our research teams. To date, more than fifteen projects have been deployed. Inria has decided not to communicate on these projects, except when the healthcare partner wishes or needs to do so.
Digital Science and Technology in support of the various scientific fronts
The projects proposed as part of this Inria Covid-19 mission reflect the specific and timely needs of the healthcare institutions and staff who are being mobilised as part of crisis management. These actions can meet the needs for data flow management, data visualization, information extraction, predictive analysis… One of the Institute's concerns is both to support the projects undertaken and to facilitate the conditions for scaling up where appropriate.
Participation in a European initiative: Pan European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing
Inria is one founding member of PEPP-PT (Pan European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing), an initiative of some leading scientific organizations in Europe, including the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, EPFL, ETHZ, etc. More than 130 outstanding scientists and technologists from 8 different countries across Europe are involved. The goal is to provide a backbone for the digital core components of the global fight against Covid19.
The PEPP-PT platform will propose approaches and solutions, upstream of any political decisions, in the contact tracing area. The objective is to provide European citizens with an indication of their recent proximity to the virus, based on a digital approach (using Bluetooth exchanges between smartphones) strictly respecting the national and European framework of privacy, including full compliance with GDPR.
In addition, Inria is leading, under government supervision, the French "Task Force" made up of public and private researchers and developers on these subjects.