More and more extensive Franco-Chinese collaboration
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| Project on the modeling of plant growth-the heliotropism
© Cyril Soler, 2000. |
The joint Franco-Chinese laboratory, Liama, has been renewed for a period of four years in a partnership extended to CIRAD and CNRS.
Created in January 1997, the Franco-Chinese laboratory of computer science, automatic control and applied mathematics was just renewed for four years within the framework of an enlarged partnership that includes a consortium of French research organizations. The consortium is composed of INRIA, CIRAD and CNRS and is open to other partners. It is actively supported by the French Embassy in Beijing. Two new directors were appointed after the new agreement was signed: Philippe de Reffye (CIRAD) and Hu Baogang (Automatic Control Institute).
The goal of the laboratory is to reinforce long term exchanges between Chinese and French researchers. In particular, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs is financing doctoral candidates at LIAMA with two advisors, one in France and one in China. This new doctoral fellowship program is advertised on the Web site of the French Embassy in Beijing (http://lotus.ia.ac.cn/ambafra/). It will contribute to an increase in numbers of such doctoral theses.
There are currently 15 research projects at LIAMA that involve, in addition to consortium members, other research organizations like IRD or the BRGM, as well as industry, Dassault-Aviation, Matra Systèmes, the Compagnie des Systèmes and EDF. Let us mention the "Stochastic, functional and interactive modeling of plant growth" project, with strong involvement by CIRAD (see Inédit n°23) and the "A geometrical and photometrical scene model for virtual museums" project to develop 3D animation algorithms for virtual museums. Applications concern the visualization of animated historical scenes that would be simultaneously culturally informational and entertaining for site visitors.
Among the projects undertaken by non consortium members, let us mention the analysis of soil structure (IRD), a project developing an original approach to correlate three-dimensional images that are becoming available from tomography, X rays or serial cross-sections, with hydrologic properties. The data come from French laboratories (CNRS, INRA), European laboratories (University of Louvain) and shortly from the Nankin Soil Sciences Institute.
