Antoine Petit
Appointment
International Scientific Advisory Committee member
CIFAR Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy Leadership
CIFAR Research Council Member
About
Antoine Petit was appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) on January 24, 2018 and for a second term on February 9, 2022. After earning a Master degree in Mathematics from the University Paris-Sud (now Paris-Saclay) and a PhD in computer science from the Université Paris Diderot, he specialized in formal methods, mostly based on transition systems, for the specification and verification of parallel systems in real time. An academic from 1984 to 2004, Dr. Petit served as an assistant professor at the Université d’Orléans, a lecturer at the Université Paris-Sud and a professor at the ENS Cachan (now ENS Paris-Saclay and part of University Paris-Saclay) from 1994.
From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Petit was deputy director of the French Research Ministry’s Research Department, in charge of Mathematics and Information and Communication Sciences and Technologies. In 2004, he joined CNRS, first as scientific director of the Information and Communication Science and Technologies Department, before becoming inter-regional director for South West France. In 2006, he joined the French National Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (Inria) as head of the Paris-Rocquencourt research center. He was named Chairman and CEO of the Inria in 2014, having been its deputy CEO from 2010 to 2014. He has been made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and an Officer in the National Order of Merit, and was also granted the distinction of doctor honoris causa by the University of Chile.