The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

and

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematics, mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and Industrial sector, industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a ...

. It was created under the name French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (IRIA) () in 1967 at Rocquencourt near

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, part of Plan Calcul. Its first site was the historical premises of

SHAPE A shape is a graphics, graphical representation of an object's form or its external boundary, outline, or external Surface (mathematics), surface. It is distinct from other object properties, such as color, Surface texture, texture, or material ...

(central command of

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

military forces), which is still used as Inria's main headquarters. In 1980, IRIA became INRIA. Since 2011, it has been styled ''Inria''. Inria is a

Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishment A Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishment (, EPST) is a category of public research institutes. In France, they were authorized by Law No. 82-610 of 15 July 1982. In Algeria, they were authorized by decree No. 99-256 of 16 November 19 ...

(EPST) under the double supervision of the French Ministry of National Education, Advanced Instruction and Research and the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry.

Administrative status

Inria has nine research centers distributed across France (in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( ; ; Gascon language, Gascon ; ) is a city on the river Garonne in the Gironde Departments of France, department, southwestern France. A port city, it is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the Prefectures in F ...

Grenoble Grenoble ( ; ; or ; or ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of the Isère Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regions of France, region ...

- Inovallée,

Lille Lille (, ; ; ; ; ) is a city in the northern part of France, within French Flanders. Positioned along the Deûle river, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Prefectures in F ...

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

, Nancy,

- Rocquencourt,

Rennes Rennes (; ; Gallo language, Gallo: ''Resnn''; ) is a city in the east of Brittany in Northwestern France at the confluence of the rivers Ille and Vilaine. Rennes is the prefecture of the Brittany (administrative region), Brittany Regions of F ...

, Saclay, and Sophia Antipolis) and one center abroad in

Santiago de Chile Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital city, capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's Chilean Central Valley, central valley and is the center ...

, Chile. It also contributes to academic research teams outside of those centers. Inria Rennes is part of the joint Institut de recherche en informatique et systèmes aléatoires (IRISA) with several other entities. Before December 2007, the three centers of Bordeaux, Lille and Saclay formed a single research center called INRIA Futurs. In October 2010, Inria, with Pierre and Marie Curie University (now

Sorbonne University Sorbonne University () is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to the Middle Ages in 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sorbon as a constituent college of the Unive ...

) and

Paris Diderot University Paris Diderot University, also known as Paris 7 (), was a French university located in Paris, France. It was one of the inheritors of the historic University of Paris, which was split into 13 universities in 1970. Paris Diderot merged with Pari ...

started IRILL, a center for innovation and research initiative for free software. Inria employs 3800 people. Among them are 1300 researchers, 1000 Ph.D. students and 500 postdoctorates.

Research

Inria does both theoretical and applied research in computer science. In the process, it has produced many widely used programs, such as: * Bigloo, a Scheme implementation *

CADP CADP (Construction and Analysis of Distributed Processes) is a toolbox for the design of communication protocols and distributed systems. CADP is developed by the CONVECS team (formerly by the VASY team) at INRIA Rhone-Alpes and connected to vari ...

, a tool box for the verification of asynchronous concurrent systems *

Caml Caml (originally an acronym for Categorical Abstract Machine Language) is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose, high-level, functional programming language which is a dialect of the ML programming language family. Caml was developed in France ...

, a language from the ML family ** Caml Light and

OCaml OCaml ( , formerly Objective Caml) is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, High-level programming language, high-level, Comparison of multi-paradigm programming languages, multi-paradigm programming language which extends the ...

implementations * Chorus, microkernel-based distributed operating system * CompCert, verified C compiler for PowerPC, ARM and x86_32 * Contrail * Coq, a

proof assistant In computer science and mathematical logic, a proof assistant or interactive theorem prover is a software tool to assist with the development of formal proofs by human–machine collaboration. This involves some sort of interactive proof edi ...

CYCLADES The CYCLADES computer network () was a French research network created in the early 1970s. It was one of the pioneering networks experimenting with the concept of packet switching and, unlike the ARPANET, was explicitly designed to facilitate i ...

, pioneered the use of

datagrams A datagram is a basic transfer unit associated with a packet-switched network. Datagrams are typically structured in header and payload sections. Datagrams provide a connectionless communication service across a packet-switched network. The de ...

, functional layering, and the end-to-end strategy. * Eigen (C++ library) * Esterel, a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

for State Automata * Geneauto — code-generation from model * Graphite, a research platform for computer graphics, 3D modeling and numerical geometry * Gudhi — A C++ library with Python interface for computational topology and topological data analysis * Le Lisp, a portable Lisp implementation * medInria, a medical image processing software, popularly used for MRI images. * GNU MPFR, an arbitrary-precision floating-point library * OpenViBE, a

software platform A computing platform, digital platform, or software platform is the infrastructure on which software is executed. While the individual components of a computing platform may be obfuscated under layers of abstraction, the ''summation of the requi ...

dedicated to designing, testing and using

brain–computer interface A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a brain–machine interface (BMI), is a direct communication link between the brain's electrical activity and an external device, most commonly a computer or robotic limb. BCIs are often dire ...

s. * Pharo, an open-source Smalltalk derived from

Squeak Squeak is an object-oriented, class-based, and reflective programming language. It was derived from Smalltalk-80 by a group that included some of Smalltalk-80's original developers, initially at Apple Computer, then at Walt Disney Imaginee ...

br>
*

scikit-learn scikit-learn (formerly scikits.learn and also known as sklearn) is a free and open-source machine learning library for the Python programming language. It features various classification, regression and clustering algorithms including support ...

, a machine learning software package *

Scilab Scilab is a free and open-source, cross-platform numerical computational package and a high-level, numerically oriented programming language. It can be used for signal processing, statistical analysis, image enhancement, fluid dynamics simul ...

, a numerical computation software package * SimGrid * SmartEiffel, a free Eiffel compiler *

SOFA A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, chesterfield, or Davenport (sofa), davenport, is a cushioned piece of furniture that can seat multiple people. It is commonly found in the form of a bench (furniture), bench with Upholstery, upholstered ...

, an open source framework for multi-physics simulation with an emphasis on medical simulation. * TOM, a pattern matching language * ViSP, an open source visual servoing platform library * XtreemFS * XtreemOS, a grid distributed operating system * Zenon, an extensible automated theorem prover producing checkable proofs Inria furthermore leads French AI Research, ranking 12th worldwide in 2019, based on accepted publications at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.

History

During the summer of 1988, the INRIA connected its Sophia-Antipolis unit to the

NSFNet The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The ...

via Princeton using a satellite link leased to France Telecom and MCI. The link became operational on 8 August 1988, and allowed INRIA researchers to access the US network and allowed

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

researchers access to an astronomical database based in

Strasbourg Strasbourg ( , ; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and largest city of the Grand Est Regions of France, region of Geography of France, eastern France, in the historic region of Alsace. It is the prefecture of the Bas-Rhin Departmen ...

. This was the first international connection to NSFNET and the first time that French networks were connected directly to a network using

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

. The Internet in France was limited to research and education for some years to come.

References

External links

* * {{authority control Computer science research organizations History of computing in France Scientific agencies of the government of France Theoretical computer science Computer science institutes in France Members of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics Information technology research institutes Carnot label

Administrative status

Research

History

References

Further reading

External links