Inria Chile receives a delegation of representatives from French ministries and presents its results, perspectives, and priorities

On April 17, a delegation led by Donato Giorgi, Delegate for International and European Affairs of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research of France; accompanied by Marie-Pierre Macian, Officer for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Delegation for European and International Affairs of the same ministry; Valentine Chazot, representative of the Subdirectorate for Higher Education and Research of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France; and Aude Chanson, Head of the Americas at Campus France Agency, was received by Nayat Sánchez-Pi, director of Inria Chile, to visit for the first time the only Inria center outside France..

During the visit, Nayat Sánchez-Pi, director of Inria Chile, gave an institutional presentation detailing the center's 13-year trajectory in the country and the progress of the recently created Franco-Chilean Binational Center for Artificial Intelligence, an initiative created by Inria and the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation of Chile and operated by Inria Chile, which seeks to enhance collaboration between the artificial intelligence ecosystems of both countries.

During the visit, which also included Cécile Vigouroux, Director of International Relations at Inria in France, the delegation had the opportunity to learn about the work of Inria Chile through demonstrations of projects in digital sciences and particularly in artificial intelligence, with a focus on strategic areas such as oceans, agriculture, the environment, and astrophysics.

The demos presented by the team were: 

• OcéanIA: Explainable Artificial Intelligence for the identification of plankton species.

• OcéanIA: High-resolution modeling and interpolation of marine snow using AI to study climate change.

• GalactIA: Artificial intelligence and machine learning in astrophysics.

• Smart Agriculture: Micro-localized climate forecasting systems to optimize crops.

• Smart Agriculture: Use of computer vision in agricultural applications.

• EMISTRAL: Development of reinforcement learning for autonomous sailboats dedicated to environmental research.

Finally, the visit also allowed the delegation to learn about the role of Inria Chile in supporting the ecosystem of scientific and technological entrepreneurship and innovation. In this context, the Trophée Startup, an annual competition that promotes the internationalization of Chilean startups in France and enhances the French ecosystem's attractiveness was presented. 

In this context, the startups Qisa 3D (digital health) and TheodorIA (ethical AI), winners of the 2024 edition of the Trophée Startup, gave presentations of their projects. They were joined by Suncast, a startup focused on AI applied to renewable energies and the winner of the 2021 edition, demonstrating the sustained impact of the program.