Hélène Kirchner
© Inria/Photo P. Caron

Hélène Kirchner, former Director of Inria International Relations, tells us about BIS workshop

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• Hélène, what is “BIS” workshop?

« BIS» stands for Berkeley-Inria-Stanford, U.C. Berkeley and Stanford University being the first Californian universities with joint research projects with Inria when the Inria@SiliconValley program was launched in 2011 with CITRIS. Continuing the work with theese two main collaborators,  the Inria@SiliconValley program now includes other Californian partners of Inria. BIS is an annual workshop, hosted alternatively in France and California. It provides an opportunity to present the state of scientific collaborations, to share results and experiments, and to work on proposals for future ambitious joint projects.

• How has BIS evolved over the past 5 years?

The very first workshop in 2011 was the official kick-off of the collaboration. It was hosted at CITRIS in Berkeley; the objective was to  leverage the existing strong ties between Inria and Californian scientists; it was the opportunity to present the current state of scientific collaborations and various invited speakers were presenting their expected scientific breakthroughs in computational sciences for the five next years.

In 2012 in Paris, the associate teams were reporting on their on-going successful exchanges and next goals; emerging collaborations were proposed  on the Big Data Science theme and its scientific and societal challenges. The location in Paris downtown gave the opportunity to invite representatives of french technology clusters interested by an international development.

The 2013 workshop, hosted at Stanford, saw an increasing number of researchers working together as part of Inria@SiliconValley. It was further the occasion to investigate possible joint projects on the smart city theme. The  CityLab partnership was set up to develop and demonstrate smart cities technologies in Paris and San Francisco. It was also the first attempt to organize the presentations in working sessions to increase discussions and collaboration between associate teams.

In 2014  in Paris, more invited speakers were coming beyond Inria researchers and their Californian collaborators, with in particular the  participation of  two Californian Inria International Chairs. But this opening was also achieved through a one-day event on the subject “Towards Smarter Cities”  with talks from city, academia and industry representatives, so as to emphasize opportunities for France-California collaborations on the topic.

• What will be the highlights of BIS’2015 (May 12th-14th, 2015)?

After 4 years of activity, it was time to assess the outcome of the collaboration before going on and to decide next objectives. So, part of the workshop enlightens joint results of the collaboration, another part is devoted to think together on future goals. Interaction between associate teams is expected during the  Parallel Working Sessions on Neuroimaging, Scientific Computing, and Smart City. And the open aspect of Inria@SiliconValley is featured this year by the co-organisation with CITRIS and  EIT ICT Labs, of the conference ‘Who Owns the Data?” that brings together data scientists, entrepreneurs, and representatives of public agencies, advocacy organizations, and the private sector from the United States and Europe.

• What outcomes do you expect from BIS’2015 edition?

We expect indeed new challenges for collaboration where each partner can contribute in a balance and complementary way, but also an improved shared vision on the future with our american partners.

An improved visibility of the Inria@SiliconValley initiative and successful outcomes of the californian-french collaboration in terms of research, transfer and innovation, should benefit to all partners.

For more information, visit BIS’2015 website!

**Update February 2016: BIS 2016 will take place in Paris in June 8th -10th in the brand new Inria Research Center of Paris, with an open conference to be held in the framework of the Futur en Seine digital festival **

Interview by Tania Castro, European and International Partnerships Department