In few words

The Laboratory of Computer Sciences is composed by 36 Professors and Assistant professors, 31 PhD candidates and 10 PhD. The Lab is structured into five teams whose research teams mainly concern the conception of performing algorithms for solving high combinatorial problems, providing decision aid and data mining.

The application fields of the research activities are mostly oritented towards the medical sector (technical aid for physical disabilities, autism, resolution of logistic problems in hospitals, image analysis for diagnostic aid, interactive data visualisation, etc.) but also towards the banking sector (authentication of handwritten signatures) or towards the industrial production (collaborations with SKF, Primagaz, Procter & Gamble, etc.).

The lab is organised in 5 research teams:

• databases and natural language processing (BDTLN)
• visual data mining and biomimetic algorithms (FOVEA)
• handicaps and new technologies (HaNT)
• scheduling and control (OC)
• pattern recognition and image analysis (RFAI)

We start 2010 in an always-on-the-go environment, with ongoing projects and new ones.

At a local level, the University of Tours is now following the new measures known as “Responsabilités et Compétences Elargies”, and the PRES (a regional centre of research and higher education) which is being set up with Orleans should soon be officially operating. This will have a direct impact on the functioning of the Doctoral Schools, which will then become part of the PRES.

At a national level, the CNRS (the French National Center for Scientific Research) announced the creation of a new institute, called INS2I (which directly concerns our discipline).

At the beginning of the new year we can’t but notice a great activity inside the Laboratory of Computer Science (LI): indeed, 5 new PhD thesis have been started following CIFRE conventions (industrial conventions for training through research), 2 conferences are being organized (SPECIF’2010, 13-15 January, and PMS’2010, 26-28 April), 2 foreign professors have been invited to work with us for one month, and the preparation of the project for 2012-2015 is well on the go. As we already did before, we intend to ask for an association with the CNRS, and more than ever, the policy of the LI is to have its PhD students publish papers in international journals. Parallel to our activities, our actions must lead to obtaining projects for the future contract which will run from 2012 to 2015. The training offer for the Master Programs in Computer Science will be largely developed.

It now falls on us to pursue the dynamics, for the sake of our PhD students, of our laboratory and of our discipline, at the University of Tours.

20th January, 2010

J-C. Billaut, director