Simula hosts visit from French government agencies

Published: 21.09.2023

For more than 100 years, Norway and France have developed a bilateral alliance for research, education and innovation. In line with this tradition, Simula hosted visitors from French and Norwegian government agencies for research and higher education this week to learn more about the strategic collaboration between Simula and Inria, as well as other collaborations with French research institutions and companies.

In 2019, Simula andInria (the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology) entered a strategic collaboration at the institutional level. Currently, Simula and Inria run four cross-institutional research groups, so-called Associate Teams, addressing important research challenges in software engineering, high-performance computing, and cryptography. In addition to these teams that provide efficient means for mobility of researchers and students, the two institutions collaborate closely through several EU-funded research projects.

During their time at Simula, the visitors learned about the existing activities as well as the plans for future expansion of the collaboration with Inria, likely to cover artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, mobile communication and the Internet of Things. Providing an excellent basis for conducting excellent research, this collaboration is enthusiastically supported at all levels, from peer-to-peer relationships between researchers to the top management of both institutions. The government agencies present from both countries applauded the collaboration and look forward to its continuation. “Working closely with Inria, which is one of the top-ranked research institutions in Europe, is very inspiring and strategically important for Simula”, says Managing Director Lillian Røstad. “It is also a very visible nod towards the quality and relevance of Simula’s research that Inria has chosen Simula as one of their prioritised partners for collaboration”, adds Research Director Are Magnus Bruaset.

In addition to the Inria collaboration, researchers from Simula also presented several other collaborations with French partners, including universities, research institutions and commercial companies.

Pictured above from the left:

Back row: Sven-Arne Reinemo(Research Director of Simula Metropolitan), Fanny Dufetel-Viste (Chargée de mission relations bilatérales pays européens MESRI), Rozen Saunier, (Deputy director of European and international affairs, French ministry of research and higher education), Samuel Wall (Chief Research Scientist/Research Professor, Simula), Prof Are Magnus Bruaset (Research Director of HPC and Software Engineering, Simula), Dr. Lillian Røstad (Managing Director, Simula), Frederic Bessat, (Attaché for Science, French embassy, Oslo)

Front row: Birgit Jacobsen(Norges Forskningsråd), Torbjørn Grønner(Ambassaderåd / Conseiller Ambassade de Norvège, Paris - Directeur Maison de Norvège - CIUP), Lene Krogh Baldersheim (Senior Adviser, Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills), Guri Brochmann Skoklefald (Ministry of Education and Research, Norway)

Simula hosts visit from French government agencies

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