Abstract: Data science and innovation have become overloaded terms, leading to some confusion. To be successful, the innovation process involves not only inventions (e.g., new methods) but also context, e.g., user behavior, and timing, e.g., market readiness. In this talk, I discuss the impact of data science on innovation, using selected success stories (some of which I was involved in). I also give hints to promote innovation within companies, in particular, using open innovation. Finally, I describe some innovations in the context of the Inria-Brasil partnership.

 

Biography: Patrick Valduriez is an emeritus director of research at Inria, France, the scientific director of the Inria-Brasil international lab. and the Chief Scientist Officer of the LeanXcale company. He is also a collaborator in the Data Extreme Lab. (DEXL) at LNCC, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 

He spent most of his career at Inria as director of research, where he created and directed three teams (Rodin, Atlas and Zenith). He has also been a professor of computer science at University Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), now Sorbonne University, in Paris (2000-2002), a researcher at Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. in Austin, Texas (1985-1989) and a researcher at Inria (1982-1984).

 

He received his Ph.D. degree (advised by Professor Georges Gardarin) and Doctorat d'Etat in Computer Science from UPMC in 1981 and 1985, respectively. From 1995 to 2000, he was the manager of the Bull-Inria joint venture (called Dyade), which fostered technology transfer in IT and security. Dyade spined off five successful start-ups, including Kelkoo based on the Disco software that he built at Inria with his team. He has also been consulting for major companies in USA (HP Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, Microsoft), Europe (Ask, ESA, Eurocontrol, Shell) and France (Bull, Capgemini, Matra Marconi Space, Murex, Orsys, Schlumberger).

 

He is currently a member of the Zenith team (between Inria and University of Montpellier at the LIRMM lab.), focusing on data science, in particular data management in large-scale distributed and parallel systems and scientific data management. He has authored and co-authored more than 400 technical papers and several textbooks, among which “Principles of Distributed Database Systems” (with Professor Tamer Özsu, University of Waterloo). He currently serves as associate editor of the Distributed and Parallel Databases journal. He has served as PC chair of major conferences such as SIGMOD and VLDB. He was the general chair of SIGMOD 2004, EDBT 2008 and VLDB 2009.

 

He received the best paper award at several international conferences (VLDB 2000, SBAC 2005, VecPar 2008, SBBD 2017, DEXA 2020). He was the recipient of the 1993 IBM scientific prize in Computer Science in France and the 2014 Innovation Award from Inria and the French Academy of Science. He is an ACM Fellow, an AAIA Fellow and a Trustee Emeritus of the VLDB Endowment.