The 2018 Inria Awards winners have been announced

Inria - French Académie des sciences Grand Prize : Xavier Leroy

A world leader in the sciences of programming languages and program verification and a professor at the Collège de France on the permanent chair of Software Science, Xavier Leroy is particularly renowned for his theoretical contributions on typing and semantics and the role they can have in computer security. Two ambitious projects characterize its expertise: the OCaml programming language (one of the two most commonly used functional languages today) and the CompCert compiler, an essential component in the security chain for critical software. Xavier Leroy's contributions, both theoretical and practical, represent a considerable step forward in the field of safe programming of modern systems.

Inria – French Académie des Sciences – Dassault Systèmes Innovation Award : Stéphane Cotin

Stéphane Cotin, as Senior Researcher with his MIMESIS project team, leads a high-level international research activity on digital medical simulation in the fields of surgical gesture training but also intraoperative assistance via augmented reality techniques. In February 2013, he and several fellow researchers, InSimo, created a start-up using SOFA, an open source interactive simulation software framework that he initiated. InSimo is a creator of surgical simulation applications on virtual organs with high fidelity behavior. Stéphane Cotin is particularly involved in clinical innovation.

Inria – French Académie des Sciences Young Researcher Award : Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Senior Researcher at Inria, is one of the pioneers of "artificial curiosity", an approach to artificial intelligence through intrinsically motivated autonomous learning. For several years now, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer and his FLOWERS project team have been working in this field of activity, which aims to combine artificial intelligence and intrinsic motivation to develop educational technologies in the service of human learning. This research is of particular interest to the world of education and a project with a consortium of companies for large-scale experiments is being set up.

Research Support Award : From Shape to the digital inventors exhibition

This Award reflects the involvement and professionalism of Thierry Boche, Marie-Pierre Diquelou and Rémy Taillefer at Inria's headquarters in the design, creation and implementation of the exhibition Du Shape aux inventeurs du numérique , a retrospective of almost 70 years of IT history, inaugurated in November 2017 as part of the institute's 50th anniversary celebrations. After one year of activity, the team proposes an approach to professionalize and complete this exhibition. Its ambition is to develop this project into a museum of information technology with a rotating exhibition of the institute's current and future projects.

Research Support Award : SonarQube@Inria

This Award recognizes the involvement of five employees from three Inria research centres (Bordeaux-Sud-Ouest, Lille-Nord-Europe and Rennes-Bretagne-Atlantique) in the implementation of the SonarQube platform within the institute. SonarQube@Inria offers a detailed view of the evolution over time of the quality of the software developed at Inria. It is the result of a collective approach initiated in three centres and should lead to a national service operated by the Information Systems Department. This project illustrates the importance of coordination between the various trades and the various sites of the institute.