Microsoft and INRIA agreed to create the centre in 2005, and it's the second such computer-science partnership that the Redmond, Washington-based software company has formed with European public researchers. The other is the Centre for Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Trento, Italy.
Microsoft said the INRIA centre's objectives are:
- To advance scientific knowledge in areas including life
sciences, physical sciences, and environmental sciences
- To advance the state of the art in computational science
and specifically in areas such as performance, security, and
reliability
- To
communicate and share the results of this research such that it benefits the
broader scientific community.
Under the management of the INRIA Research Director, Jean-Jacques Lévy, the centre is controlled by a management committee made up of equal numbers of representatives from INRIA and Microsoft