Maureen Clerc

Director of the Inria centre at Université Côte d’Azur
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Maureen Clerc
Photo Aurélie Macarri - Université Côte d'Azur

Maureen Clerc is director of the Inria centre at Université Côte d'Azur as of 8 November 2019.

Maureen Clerc took up her position as head of the Inria centre at Université Côte d'Azur on 8 November 2019. Appointed by Bruno Sportisse, CEO of Inria, she succeeds to David Simplot, who ran the centre until October 2019. David Simplot will manage the 3IA Côte d'Azur and will also be responsible for the development of Inria's national offer in terms of continuous training for companies on digital technologies. The heart of her work is the brain.

Maureen Clerc is research director in Inria Sophia Antipolis and Engineer in Chief of the "corps des Ingénieurs des Ponts, Eaux et Forêts". Within the Odyssee and then Athena project-teams, she has carried out work combining mathematics and computer science in order to analyse and interpret brain activity. Her fields of expertise range from signal processing to numerical simulation in bio-electromagnetism, including brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and their clinical use.

"In an Inria research centre, a very nice alchemy operates between mathematics and computer science.It deploys a large spectrum of creativity, from theory to experimentation, and often in interaction with other disciplines. I will endeavor to pursue the work of my predecessors, affirming the strong role of Inria in the digital sciences, along with the academic and socio-economic partners of the regions where the centre is located ", says Maureen Clerc. She graduated from École Polytechnique in 1993 and obtained a doctoral degree in applied mathematics from the same school in 1999, followed by a habilitation to conduct research from the University of Nice - Sophia Antipolis in 2007. She was awarded the Pierre Faurre Prize from the French Academy of Sciences in 2014. 

"I would like to thank Maureen for having accepted this responsibility at a crucial time for the institute, which is engaged in a new strategic cycle with its 2019-2023 objectives and performance contract, and in the specific context of the Sophia Antipolis-Mediterranean centre, which is particularly involved in the dynamics of the Université Côte d'Azur, " says Bruno Sportisse.

From 2014 to 2018, Maureen Clerc was Deputy Scientific Delegate for the Sophia Antipolis Centre. She was involved in the partnership between Inria and Université Côte d'Azur, contributing to the creation of the thematic institute of the Université Côte d'Azur NeuroMod for modelling in neurosciences and cognition.