Emmanuel Macron announced it himself on May 21 at the Élysée. As part of the France 2030 program, nine winners of the “IA-Cluster” call for expressions of national interest, launched in June 2023 by the National Research Agency, were designated for a total amount of 360 million euros. The stated objective is to create future European champions in terms of artificial intelligence. Among them, the SequoIA project led by the University of Rennes and its partners, and supported by the Brittany Region.
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Good news for the structuring of the regional ecosystem connected to AI. With financial aid of 20 million euros, SequoIA – whose overall budget will be around 60 million euros – aims to develop research on the theme of AI, security and trust in this new technology.
« SequoIA mobilise education stakeholders (University of Rennes, CentraleSupélec, ENS, EPSCP INSA, UBO, etc.), institutions (DGA-MI, Region, Rennes Métropole, etc.) and around forty SMEs and industrialists such as Orange , Airbus, Thales or Naval Group. Our common objective is to work on high-level research, the development of higher education sectors in AI and the emergence of an innovation ecosystem. », specifies Guillaume Gravier, director of the Institute for Research in Computer Science and Random Systems (Irisa) in Rennes and head of the project.
New targeted chairs
Regarding the research component, a call for chairs on targeted subjects linked to the region’s preferred sectors (cybersecurity, defense, environment and oceans) should be launched soon. It will make it possible to complete projects, such as the IA OcéaniX chair at IMT Atlantique in Brest. By highlighting AI applied to Breton areas of excellence, these courses aim to contribute to the attractiveness of the territory and also to bring in foreign researchers.
« If the timetable is not shifted due to the political context, we anticipate a start of these chairs at the beginning of 2025, to which will be added junior chairs for researchers at the start of their careers. » specifies Guillaume Gravier.
« More generally, the project intends increase the number of people trained in AI and its uses through the development of new education programs. It also provides for the creation of a new specialized university school based on the ISblue model in Brest and interdisciplinary masters degrees (AI and cybersecurity).” he continues.
Crossing of strategic areas
In addition to the emergence of an internationally renowned French academic center in AI, the SequoIA project aims to create, with manufacturers and SMEs, disruptive innovations that will have an impact on the economy, in cybersecurity and defense (smart networks , surveillance, intelligence, autonomous robots), as in the observation of the oceanic and terrestrial environment.
The creation of a datalab, a computing and data storage infrastructure, is in the pipeline, as is the development, thanks to AI, of “digital twins” of the Earth and oceans in order to observe the effects of global warming or to serve underwater defense.
At the national level, the “IA-Cluster” call for expressions of interest is part of the French strategy for artificial intelligence, with a budget of 2.5 billion euros.
