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, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

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

. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatique et en automatique'' (IRIA) in 1967 at Rocquencourt near

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, part of

Plan Calcul Plan Calcul was a French governmental program to promote a national or European computer industry and associated research and education activities. The plan was approved in July 1966 by President Charles de Gaulle, in the aftermath of two key even ...

. Its first site was the historical premises of

SHAPE A shape or figure is a graphical representation of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface, as opposed to other properties such as color, texture, or material type. A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie ...

(central command of

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

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 The Ministry of Economics, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty (french: Ministère de l'Économie, des Finances et de la Souveraineté industrielle et numérique, pronounced ), informally referred to as Bercy, is one of the most impor ...

Administrative status

Inria has 9 research centers distributed across France (in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefect ...

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

Inovallée Inovallée (contraction in French for the words innovation and valley) is a science park located at Meylan and Montbonnot-Saint-Martin near Grenoble in France. Created in 1972 with the acronym ZIRST, it becomes Inovallée in 2005 and houses prima ...

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Pref ...

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...

, Nancy,

- Rocquencourt, Rennes,

Saclay Saclay () is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It had a population of 3,067 in 2006. It is best known for the large scientific facility CEA Saclay, mostly dealing with nuclear and pa ...

, and

Sophia Antipolis (wisdom), gr, (Ἀντίπολις, antipolis) ("opposite city" from its position on the opposite side of the Var estuary from Nice, also former name of Antibes, part of the technology park) , postal_code = 06220 (Vallauris), 06250 (Mo ...

) and one center abroad in

Santiago de Chile Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. 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 The is a joint computer science research center of CNRS, University of Rennes 1, ENS Rennes, INSA Rennes and Inria, in Rennes in Brittany. It is one of the eight Inria research centers. Created in 1975 as a spin-off of the University of Renn ...

(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 (french: Sorbonne Université; la Sorbonne: 'the Sorbonne') is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sor ...

) and

Paris Diderot University Paris Diderot University, also known as Paris 7 (french: Université Paris Diderot), 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 197 ...

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 A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be ...

and applied research in computer science. In the process, it has produced many widely used programs, such as *

Bigloo Bigloo is a programming language, a dialect of the language Lisp, an implementation of the language Scheme. It is developed at the French IT research institute French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA). It is orie ...

, a

Scheme A scheme is a systematic plan for the implementation of a certain idea. Scheme or schemer may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''The Scheme'' (TV series), a BBC Scotland documentary series * The Scheme (band), an English pop band * ''The Schem ...

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 In computer science, concurrency is the ability of different parts or units of a program, algorithm, or problem to be executed out-of-order or in partial order, without affecting the outcome. This allows for parallel execution of the concurr ...

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

, a language from the ML family **

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

and OCaml implementations *

Chorus Chorus may refer to: Music * Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse * Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound * Chorus form, song in which all verse ...

, microkernel-based distributed operating system *

CompCert CompCert is a formally verified optimizing compiler for a large subset of the C99 programming language (known as Clight) which currently targets PowerPC, ARM, RISC-V, x86 and x86-64 architectures. This project, led by Xavier Leroy, started o ...

, verified C compiler for PowerPC, ARM and x86_32 *

Contrail Contrails (; short for "condensation trails") or vapor trails are line-shaped clouds produced by aircraft engine exhaust or changes in air pressure, typically at aircraft cruising altitudes several miles above the Earth's surface. Contrails ar ...

Coq Coq is an interactive theorem prover first released in 1989. It allows for expressing mathematical assertions, mechanically checks proofs of these assertions, helps find formal proofs, and extracts a certified program from the constructive proof ...

, 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 editor ...

Eigen (C++ library) Eigen is a high-level C++ library of template headers for linear algebra, matrix and vector operations, geometrical transformations, numerical solvers and related algorithms. Eigen is open-source software licensed under the Mozilla Public Li ...

Esterel Esterel is a synchronous programming language for the development of complex reactive systems. The imperative programming style of Esterel allows the simple expression of parallelism and preemption. As a consequence, it is well suited for cont ...

, a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

for State Automata * Geneauto — code-generation from model * Graphite, a research platform for computer graphics, 3D modeling and numerical geometry * Gudhi — A

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

library with

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

interface for

computational topology Algorithmic topology, or computational topology, is a subfield of topology with an overlap with areas of computer science, in particular, computational geometry and computational complexity theory. A primary concern of algorithmic topology, as its ...

and

topological data analysis In applied mathematics, topological based data analysis (TDA) is an approach to the analysis of datasets using techniques from topology. Extraction of information from datasets that are high-dimensional, incomplete and noisy is generally challengin ...

Le Lisp Le Lisp (also Le_Lisp and Le-Lisp) is a programming language, a dialect of the language Lisp. It was developed at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA), to be an implementation language for a very large scale ...

, a portable Lisp implementation * medInria, a medical image processing software, popularly used for MRI images. *

GNU MPFR The GNU Multiple Precision Floating-Point Reliable Library (GNU MPFR) is a GNU portable C library for arbitrary-precision binary floating-point computation with correct rounding, based on GNU Multi-Precision Library. Library MPFR's computatio ...

, an arbitrary-precision floating-point library *

OpenViBE OpenViBE is a software platform dedicated to designing, testing and using brain-computer interfaces. The package includes a Designer tool to create and run custom applications, along with several pre-configured and demo programs which are ready ...

, a

software platform A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying ...

dedicated to designing, testing and using

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

s. *

Pharo Pharo is an open source, cross-platform implementation of the classic Smalltalk-80 programming language and runtime. It's based on the OpenSmalltalk virtual machine called Cog (VM), which evaluates a dynamic, reflective, and object-orient ...

, 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 Imagineering, ...

br>
*

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

, a machine learning software package * Scilab, a numerical computation software package *

SimGrid {{Infobox software , name = SimGrid , title = SimGrid , logo = , author = , developer = , released = {{start date, 1998{{cite conference , first = Henri , last = Casanova , title = A Toolkit for the Simulation of Application Scheduli ...

SmartEiffel SmartEiffel is a free Eiffel compiler. The compiler translates Eiffel code either to C or Java bytecode. Hence it can be used to write programs that run on virtually any platform for which an ANSI C compiler or a Java virtual machine exist. ...

, a free Eiffel compiler *

SOFA A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield, is a cushioned item of furniture for seating multiple people (although it is not uncommon for a single person to use a couch alone). It is commonly found in the form of a bench with up ...

, 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 The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the Europea ...

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 prestigious

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (abbreviated as NeurIPS and formerly NIPS) is a machine learning and computational neuroscience conference held every December. The conference is currently a double-track meet ...

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

Administrative status

Research

References

Further reading

External links