Inria

Established in 1967, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique (Inria, www.inria.fr) is the only French public research body fully dedicated to computational sciences. It is a national operator in research in digital sciences and is a primary contact point for the French Government on digital matters. Under its founding decree as a public science and technology institution, jointly supervised by the French ministries for research and industry, Inria’s missions are to produce outstanding research in the computing and mathematical fields of digital sciences and to ensure the impact of this research on the economy and society in particular. Inria covers the entire spectrum of research at the heart of these activity fields and works on digitally-related issues raised by other sciences and by actors in the economy and society at large. Beyond its structures, Inria’s identity and strength are forged by its ability to develop a culture of scientific innovation, to stimulate creativity in digital research.
Throughout its eight research centres and its 183 project teams, Inria has a workforce of 2 400 scientists with an annual budget of 231 million euros, 25% of which coming from its own resources.
Inria’s mission is to pursue excellent research in computer science and applied mathematics in order to play a major role in resolving scientific, societal and industrial challenges. Therefore, Inria actively collaborates with public and private bodies including strategic partnerships with large firms, SME’s technology platforms and industrial clusters. Technology transfer is further enhanced by helping to launch new companies (since 1984, about 140 companies have stemmed from Inria) and by forming partnerships with innovative SMEs.
Inria has been very active in the previous European framework programmes (in FP7: 231 projects). The institute is strongly involved in programmes aimed at fostering scientific excellence, such as the European Research Council: 32 Grants in FP7 and 18 Grants in Horizon 2020. Inria makes a firm commitment to Horizon 2020, with which the institute’s strategic plan is aligned. The objective is to combine scientific excellence with a more focused consideration of major European and global societal challenges to which Inria can bring a key contribution. Inria is currently involved in more than 90 H2020 funded projects.

In TACTILITY, Inria is leader of WP4. The Hybrid team at Inria is an internationally recognized actor in the field of virtual reality and haptic feedback. As such, Inria is responsible of the research and design of how the TACTILITY technology will be used in the context of immersive experiences. In addition, Inria is also contributing to several tasks in WP5.