Yesterday, thanks to Jean Paul Jacob and Jim Spohrer, I had an opportunity to spend some time with Professor Michel Cosnard, President-General Director of INRIA.
BIO: Michel Cosnard has been Chairman and CEO of INRIA, since 2006. Previously, Michel Cosnard served as Professor at Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and from 1997, as director of the INRIA Research Unit in Lorraine. In 2001, he was nominated director of the INRIA Research Unit in Sophia Antipolis and served as Professor at the University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis.
Michel Cosnard obtained a Master of Science degree in 1975 from Cornell University and a Doctorat d’Etat in 1983 from Université de Grenoble. Michel Cosnard has been member of the FP6 IST Evaluation Committee, chaired by Eskko Aho. He is currently member of ISTAG (Information Society Technologies Advisory Group), and chairs the ISTAG-FET working group. His research interests are in the design and analysis of parallel algorithms, in the complexity analysis of automata and neural nets. Michel Cosnard has published more than 100 papers related to parallel processing. He served as Editor of many scientific journals. He received a prize from the French Academy of Science, the IFIP Silver Core and IEEE Babbage award. In 2007, Michel Cosnard was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.