[IPAL SIGNING CEREMONY] Second Act – International Research Collaboration Agreements with French Universities

After a first signing ceremony last January that saw the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and the National University of Singapore (NUS) gather together to renew the IPAL’s agreement until 2025, last week it was time for several French universities to officially get on board!

Taking advantage of the annual IPAL SINFRA workshop happening on the 15 and 16 of June, CY Cergy Paris University, Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier University and INP Toulouse were all present in NUS, alongside NUS, A*STAR and the CNRS once again to sign a 5-year research collaboration agreement.

Several speakers shared the stage, on-site or remotely, during the event to praise the international laboratory’s long-standing history, excellent research track records as well as its previous and new international partnerships.

Introducing the event, Prof. Dominique Baillargeat (Regional director of the CNRS representative office in ASEAN and Scientific Executive Director of CNRS@CREATE) made sure to point out IPAL’s key involvement in the DesCartes program, an ambitious AI project led by CNRS@CREATE, the CNRS’ subsidiary in Singapore.

Dan Vodislav (Deputy Vice President for Research, CY Cergy Paris University), Pascal Maussion (Deputy President International, INP Toulouse) and Georges Zissis (Deputy President International, Toulouse III Paul Sabatier University) all expressed their delight at joining hands with the lab and fostering more cooperation between their entities. They also shared their enthusiasm at the idea of welcoming more Singaporean researchers in their respective universities in the coming years!

Also representing A*STAR and NUS at this new signing, Su Yi (Executive Director AI3, A*STAR) and Bingsheng He (Vice Dean of Research, School of Computing NUS) took a look back at their long-standing partnership with CNRS and French academics  thanks to the IPAL lab, going more than 20 years back, and expressed their desire to keep on collaborating for many more years to come.

Finally, the three current co-directors of the IPAL – NUS Computing Associate Professor Ooi Wei Tsang, Doctor  Christophe Jouffrais from CNRS, as well as Doctor Lim Joo Hwee  from A*STAR – were also present at the signing ceremony to share the lab’s history as well as their ambitions for the future.