THE BEST OF 2017
The 20 highlights of an eventful and action-packed year at the CNRS
JUSTICE
The CNRS hosted the national Convention on Research in Law and Justice (Etats généraux de la recherche sur le Droit et la Justice) looking at tomorrow’s issues regarding law and justice.
INNOVATION
The LAAS laboratory presented Pyrène, its new latest-generation humanoid robot, designed to interact more closely with its environment.
ECOLOGY
The CNRS Institute of Ecology and Environment (INEE) brought together 550 researchers at the Prospectives conference in Bordeaux (southwestern France) to consider new research pathways in ecology.
DISCOVERY
To celebrate the confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves by the international LIGO-Virgo collaboration, the CNRS organized the Night of Gravitational Waves, which was held simultaneously in 12 French cities.
NANOTECHNOLOGY
In a real scientific and technological challenge, nanocars competed on a 100 nanometer-long racecourse made of gold atoms during an international molecule-car race in Toulouse (southwestern France).
INTERNATIONAL
The CNRS joined the French emergency support programme for scientists in exile (PAUSE) whose aim is to host a hundred foreign researchers each year, from all disciplines and geographical origins.
RANKING
The CNRS is ranked 8th in Thomson Reuters’ list of the world’s 25 most innovative research institutions.
SOCIETY
In collaboration with the INSERM, the CNRS announced the creation, on the Condorcet campus, of a pluridisciplinary institute for the study of migrations.
EARTH
The international oceanographic campaign PEACETIME was launched to study the impact of Saharan dust on the ocean.
PRIZES
The 7thedition of the CNRS Medal of Innovationrewarded four researchers.
NEUROSCIENCES
The Broca Nouvelle-Aquitaine centre, dedicated to research on the nervous system,was inaugurated at the Université de Bordeaux’s Carreire campus.
ANNIVERSARY
The CNRS celebrated the50thanniversary of the atomic second at a day-long event held at the Paris Observatory.
MATHEMATICS
The Institut de Mathématique d'Orsay, which brings together the Laboratoire de Mathématiques d'Orsay, the Teaching Faculty and the Jacques Hadamard library, came into existence on the Orsay campus of the Université Paris-Sud.
ENVIRONMENT
The second expedition of the Ice Memory international programme aimed atprotecting the climate and environmental memory of glaciers was launched on the Illimani glacier in Bolivia.
CULTURE
An enhanced version of AGLAÉ, the unique particle accelerator of its kind dedicated to the study of heritage objects and located underneath the Louvre museum in Paris, was inaugurated under the nameNew AGLAÉ.
COMMUNICATION
The CNRS launched Zeste de Science, a newYouTube channelthat has assimilated Youtuber codes to talk about Science in a short and simplified manner.
INTERNATIONAL
A new Indo-French international joint unit, called Relax, explores theoretical computing and its applications, especially in terms of reliability and safety.
INTERDISCIPLINARITY
The Momentum programme, aimed at supporting innovative research in emerging and cross-disciplinary fields, and dedicated to young scientists having defended their thesis in the past eight years, announced its first 19 Laureates.
CLIMATE
The first 18 names selected for the Make Our Planet Great Again initiative were made public. The CNRS is in charge of the scientific leadership of this programme, launched by the French President Emmanuel Macron.
PHYSICS
The physicists Alain Brillet and Thibault Damour received the CNRS Gold Medal.