INRIA Sophia Antipolis

The National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) is a French Scientific and Technological Public Institute under the responsibility of the Ministry of Research and of the Ministry of Industry. INRIA's missions are: basic and applied research, design of experimental systems, technology and knowledge transfer, international scientific exchanges, scientific assessments, contribution to international cooperation programs and to standardisation.

Headquartered in Rocquencourt, near Paris, INRIA has five Research Centres in Lorraine, Rennes, Rhone-Alpes, Rocquencourt, Sophia Antipolis. INRIA's personnel number about 1300, including 1000 scientists. The total budget is about 76 MEcus, 80% of which is the French Government's subsidy.

INRIA Sophia Antipolis is the second largest research centre of INRIA, with an overall staff level close to 400 out of which 120 are permanent. Its total budget is in excess of 11 MEcus. Its main domains of activity are: software engineering, programming languages and symbolic computation, robotics, computer vision, image processing, computational fluid dynamics, combustion, hypersonics, system theory and control, networking and discrete event systems, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.

INRIA Sophia Antipolis has developed close ties with other laboratories of the Sophia Antipolis science park, the largest in Europe, and also with industry, both throughout Europe and in Sophia Antipolis itself, where four of INRIA's startup companies have their offices. The experience gained by INRIA in transferring its know-how to the economic world and in monitoring industrial problems will be valuable to FRISCO for the dissemination activities.

The safir project is a joint project between INRIA, the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, and CNRS. Its research theme is symbolic and algebraic computation, particularly the design of symbolic computation systems, algebraic algorithms and their complexities and applications of symbolic computation (robotics, computer vision, design and simulation). The safir project involves some two dozen members working in computer science and mathematics, including

S. Dalmas,
I. Emiris,
J. Grimm,
B. Mourrain,
Y. Papegay and
L. Pottier

as permanent INRIA research staff, and

L. Donati,
F. Eyssette,
M. Gaetano,
A. Galligo,
R. Marlin and
M. Merle

as faculty members at the University of Nice - Sophia Antipolis. Additional members contribute as support staff, post-doctoral appointees, and students at various levels.

Beginning in September 1995, S. Watt of IBM Research will join the project as a professor at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis. As the designer of Aldor, he brings unique expertise about both the language and the compiler to the FRISCO project.