At the end of July, Inria presented its new continuing education system. Focused on open source software, this structure will provide access to the big names in open source software, the results of research by the Inria teams and their partners. On the programme, Scikit-learn, SOFA, Coq, Pharo but not only!

David Simplot, project manager in charge of the creation of Inria Academy, said :

“Inria Academy is developing an offering for companies based in particular on software distributed in Open Source by Inria and its partners. This is a contribution to the digital transformation and mastery of digital technology in companies while increasing the impact of digital technologies developed by our research teams”.

Strengthening the driving force of the digital revolution

Software is the engine of the digital revolution, it is the building block for innovation and research in all areas of digital technology and researchers, engineers and software developers are the heart of this engine. Inria has a very strong software culture, having always considered free software as a multidimensional object :

• an object of scientific dissemination that is interested in the sharing of software and the impact of this dissemination within the scientific community
• an industrial object that makes the technology infrastructure cost-shared and risk-shared
• an interdisciplinary research object, focused on the application and international dissemination of knowledge

The dynamics of free software at Inria also involves the development of many open source software, because we believe that their impact will be stronger through free distribution.

The creation of the Inria Academy is another step towards communities in demand for the acquisition of this software for their teams. This technological heritage is made up of nearly 1,500 references, to be shared with different structures, whether entrepreneurial or institutional, in France and Europe.

Tailor-made training courses

Inria Academy initially offers a training catalogue consisting of four recognized and high-performance software programs in very different fields:

• Coq : “Proof assistant”, the Coq software was created more than thirty years ago at Inria for the verification of computer programs and mathematical theorems. A precious tool for computer scientists who use it for verification but also as a writing aid. And for mathematicians, who are seduced by its performance.
• Pharo Pharo : open source platform for simple and stable software development, adaptable to all development missions, even the most critical: this is the role of the Pharo software. The Pharo consortium brings together a wide variety of users with industrials such as Synectique, Thales, Lifeware, but also academic players such as the Faculty of Information Technology in Prague (Czech Republic) or the Fundación Argentina de Smalltalk.
• SOFA : open-source software platform for multi-physics simulation. Like any physics engine, SOFA allows to model physical systems and their evolution, such as the mechanics of deformable solids involving collision. Developed for more than 10 years, SOFA integrates today a large number of models, solvers and algorithms allowing the rapid development of new simulations.
• Scikit-learn SOFA: free library developed in Python, a high-level programming language. It is dedicated to machine learning and can be used as middleware, with applications in the fight against fraud and spam, marketing targeting, forecasting of user behaviour or the optimisation of industrial and logistics processes.

This offer will be expanded as the most requested software is developed, so about ten software packages will be the subject of training tailored to the needs of the requesting structure.

Innovative pedagogy, the subject of scientific research at Inria

Proud to have contributed to the setting up and development of the FUN platform since its creation in 2013, Inria has continued to support this dynamic by creating the Inria Learning-Lab to produce educational resources for all audiences through MOOCs on subjects as diverse as privacy protection, digital accessibility or reproducible research, and to lead its e-education research actions.

With its recognized expertise and creativity, Inria has demonstrated its skills in innovative pedagogy in digital sciences and supports e-education research at Inria.

Translated from Scikit-learn, SOFA, Coq, Pharo : Inria lance son Academy de formation continue dédiée aux logiciels libres