Antoine Petit: Building Scientific Bridges
By Jimmy Fryers
In a previous life, Antoine Petit was a professor of computer science. He is now the CEO and Chairman of The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). On a recent trip to Vancouver, he sat down with PIMS to discuss his role and the importance of international collaborations to tackle the world’s most complicated issues.
The Scale of the CNRS
The CNRS is the scientific research organization of the French state, the size of which is hard to comprehend. As Antoine and I sat down to talk in the bright lobby of the Pan Pacific Hotel overlooking the Vancouver Harbour, we quickly got on the subject of the organization's scale.
“I can give you some figures,” Antoine said as he smiled: “32,000 employees, more than 1000 labs in France, and almost 100 labs outside France. In addition, we have around 150 research structure with industry. If I come back to the labs, all our labs are in fact joint labs with universities and represent something like 120,000 people.”
Interestingly, the CNRS, which is celebrating its 80th year, consists of 10 divisions covering the full scientific spectrum, from physics and chemistry to the humanities and the social sciences. As Antoine sees it, his role is to guide these thematic institutes to interact and collaborate.
This theme of collaboration and scientific cooperation for the good of society was an ever-present discussion point during our conversation.
Digitization of Science
Antoine is the first computer scientist to lead the CNRS. I asked him if he thought his appointment was strategic, given the growing importance of computing in science:
“I don’t think so, nevertheless, it’s also true that we've had a lot of physicists, chemists and life scientists at the head of the CNRS, so it’s also a new page in some sense.
“What is important at the CNRS is to have been a scientist. It’s a way to understand how scientists work, what their motivations are, what is important to them and what is not important to them,” Antoine explained. His academic background, coupled with former leadership roles in Inria — The French Research Institute for Digital Sciences, he is well placed to fulfill his role; the duties of which will continue to grow in importance given the urgency of contemporary issues such as climate change.
Collaboration on the Climate Crisis
The CNRS prides itself on pushing back the frontiers of science and its scale and undoubted expertise puts it in a position where it can make a significant impact. I asked Antoine about the role the institute could play in tackling the climate crisis:
“As soon as you have ambitions to tackle social and industrial questions you need an interdisciplinary approach and that is precisely a strength of the CNRS. You really need cooperation between environmental scientists and also you need interactions with the people who are doing humanities and social sciences, but also big data and AI.
“The question is why sometimes people act and why sometimes they don’t act. On the general principles [on the causes of climate change], everyone agrees but on practical issues, they don’t. It’s important to have sociologists, anthropologists and geography and history to help us understand why a global nation will act in a certain way.” Antoine explained thoughtfully.
Even with the undeniable climate science pointing to the need to act quickly, governments do not seem to share the same decisive urgency. When asked if he saw hope for the future, he replied defiantly:
“We need to see hope! We always need to see hope.”
“Some people say to me that “you travel a lot — that’s not good for the planet,” and I understand it can be a symbol, but in fact, who cares? Whether we take a plane two times or three times will not change the planet. So it’s a problem of scalability and I really believe and think that science should help, and has to help, even if the decision at the end is not taken by the scientists. In a democracy it's not up to the scientists to make the decisions but we really have to think about scalable solutions.”
Scalability is a fundamentally important factor when working to overcome global-scale issues such as the climate crisis. Given the scale of the CNRS and its distributed international footprint, it is well-positioned to develop such kinds of solutions, and that is something not lost on Antoine:
“If you want to have the ambition that your research is useful for society then scalability questions arise very quickly. So it's important, even at top-level research, to interact with industry if we have the ambition to transfer the result to industry.”
“The CNRS is not a company so it’s not our role to transform our ideas into everyday products; we have to push the fact that we have ideas and try to transform society, so that’s why we have a strong policy of startups. Some of our PhD students and postdocs would prefer to try to be a startup rather than be an academic scientist and its very good if we can help.
“However, not everything can be done by startups, so sometimes it's faster and more efficient to work with existing big companies rather than create a new startup because scalability is an issue. But I think it’s also important for us, even on climate change, to work in a disruptive way; to find new solutions to reduce ocean pollution, for instance. These are the big issues that scientists have to work on.”
An International Approach
A key component of the CNRS’ activities is to partner with institutions across the world in the form of International Research Labs. I asked Antoine why so much of the scientific effort of the institute is focussed globally.
“Firstly, international relationships and collaborations are crucial for the CNRS. Every year we hire 30% of our prominent researchers from outside of France. So we clearly have the ambition to be international in the sense that we want to hire the best researchers and to attract them to France.
“We also know that international collaborations go through international labs everywhere. Here in Canada, for instance, we work together on AI, on particle physics, and, of course, on mathematics. I hope we will succeed in working on Ocean issues, and that’s really what we try to do — to identify the best institutions or the best labs. What’s really important is that long-term cooperation works, such as is the case for PIMS, and that really is a strength of the CNRS.”
The continuation of these Labs is a cornerstone of the CNRS strategy and one of the reasons for Antoine’s extensive travel schedule. Signing the renewal of the PIMS-CNRS IRL was also one of the reasons he was in Vancouver. The original PIMS-CNRS agreement was signed in 2007 and has seen an ongoing exchange of researchers between France and Canada. The renewal will see that longstanding relationship continue.
Research and Learning From Sport
Antoine is a keen runner. In the three short days he was in Vancouver he managed to fit a run around Stanley Park into his packaged agenda. I was curious if he thought that science and sport can learn from each other:
“You can always learn from the other. As you know, there are a lot of interactions between sport and research, for instance, in France, we have a plan to help the sportsmen and women to prepare for the 2024 Olympic games. It's very funny to see how some aspects of sport are still amateur in its approach and what science and big data can bring to sport. And conversely, I really think its more about the development of mentalities — I think if you're a sportsman or woman you will probably develop capacities to never get discouraged, to really want to win. Perhaps not for all scientists, but for some, you also need to think “I will solve this solution” when you enter into a certain field — you come into a field and say “I want to win” — it's competitive in a way,” Antoine said thoughtfully.
Hopes for the Future
As with many natural leaders I’ve met over the years, Antoine clearly has a sense of humility, which is evident from his answer when asked what he hoped to achieve during his tenure at the helm of the CNRS:
“In these kinds of positions, you have to be very modest. I think in some sense nobody cares what I do. I am exaggerating, but what I mean by that, is the CNRS has existed for 80 years and will continue to exist for many more, and fortunately, it's not the fact that I will do something — I cannot imagine that I will change the CNRS alone. What I am trying to do is promote science in society and try to convince people that we need science and therefore, that we need the CNRS.”
Antoine went on to describe his vision for how science can impact political discourse and the wider society:
“At the French level and at the European level I think that science is a universal concept so to develop international collaborations is clearly important to tackle questions like climate change. We cannot imagine that we will solve the problem in Europe without considering what happens outside of Europe — it makes no sense. So we really have to develop this international community of science. We do not have to be angelic and think that we will all agree on the science above everything. Science is all around us in our daily lives; your smartphone is full of science, but sometimes people forget it. We have to stay humble to convince people and say, at the end of the day, the decision is yours; that’s a principle of democracy. But nevertheless, you can make your decision with the most knowledge possible and hopefully you can be enlightened with science and that you don’t have to be afraid of it.”
Antoine’s passion for science and international collaboration was obvious. He spoke directly about the challenges that humanity faces to achieve the scalability required to mitigate and overcome the climate crisis. Under his leadership, the CNRS is well placed to be a global driving force in this regard.
