DISCOVERING…
THE AXA RESEARCH FUND
An anticipated vision of risk management &
commitment towards human progress
The AXA Research Fund is the science philanthropy initiative of
the AXA Group that seeks to advance knowledge on global
risks for the benefit of Society.
As a leading insurer, our key expertise lies
in understanding and managing risk, our
key responsibility in protecting people.
This means that we have an essential and
active role to play in making sure the everevolving risk landscape – the greatest
coming from where it is least expected - is
understood by society as a whole.
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An anticipated vision of risk management &
commitment towards human progress
Support
Contribute to the
academic & public debate
research
on risks
Created in 2007 with an
initial enveloppe of
100M€
« To know and share the knowledge »
+
Renewed in 2013 for an
additional 100M€
= 200M€ until 2018
12 people
A team of
hosted @ GIE AXA
Advisory Board
Focus on
An
gathering AXA Heads of Group
Professionnal Families to identify and
prioritize
the
most
relevant
research areas to be funded
Scientific
- Life
- Environment
- Socio-economic
Board
A
gathering
World
Renowned
Researchers
and
AXA
Senior
Executives
to select and support
Top-Tier Researchers
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3 clusters of risks:
Main missions:
• Academic partnerships
• Selection of grantees
• Community and communication
management
Which fields do we support?
Identifying Mitigation /
Prevention Solutions
Environmental
risks
Climate Change
Natural Hazards
Human driven
Environmental
Changes
Assessing the Social
and/or Economic
Impact
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Foster the understanding
of major risks in 3 main fields
Life risks
Aging and
Long-term Care
Understanding Causes &
Underlying phenomena
Socio-economic
risks
Geopolitical Risks
Macroeconomic Risks
Biomedical Risks
Addictions
and Risky Behaviors
Measuring and
Modeling the Risk
Behaviors
Towards Risks
Large Corporate Risks
Identifying the
Mecanisms at stake
A unique commitment of support to research,
of a large magnitude
1300+ institutions registered in 67 countries
 Selection criteria aligned with the most rigorous academic standards
 143 M€ committed to date:


o
484 projects
o
Supported in 230 institutions
o
50 nationalities of researchers
o
Granted in 33 countries
Strong communications initiatives
o
1 academic publication a day (average)
o
200+ press articles
o
100+ Youtube videos
o
3000+ Twitter followers…
The AXA Research Fund funding vehicles cover the full cycle of a Researcher’s carrier path
Junior
Post Doctoral
Fellowships
2 years - 130.000€
25 per year
5
Mid-carrier
Awards
3-4 years
250.000€
3 to 5/year
Joint Research
Initiatives
2-3 years - up to 200.000€
Up to 4 per year
Senior
AXA Chairs
5 to 30 years
up to 3M€
3 to 8 per year
Our selection processes are aligned
with the most stringent academic standards
Context & environment
appropriateness
Transformative aspect
& strategic fit
Institution
Research Laboratory
(in the Institution)
Research Strategy
(of the Research Laboratory)
Candidate
Research Project
(of the Candidate)
Academic fit
Gender mix
Distance to Risk
Business strategic alignment
Academic excellence
International exposure
Geographical footprint
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Popularization skills
Thematic diversity
Mobility
Seniority
Reverse Brain Drain
Transformative impact
Projects granted…
A few examples
Chair for Cardiovascular Cellular Engineering
Prof. Abdul Barakat - Amount granted = 2.000.000 €
Insight
Traditionally, medicine and engineering have lived in two different and
separate worlds. Now though, researchers from each world are beginning to
see how much they each stand to benefit from the unique tools and
approach of the other. Nowhere is this more true than in the ongoing battle
against cardiovascular disease, the world’s leading cause of mortality.

Heart disease and strokes are caused by atherosclerosis, or
the thickening of the arterial walls which leads to arterial
blockage by lipid-rich plaques.

This Chair is one of the first instances in which atherosclerosis
will be studied through a trans-disciplinary approach that
combines biology and engineering.

The Research Team is hosted by the LadHyx, a lab which
conducts
theoretical,
numerical
and
experimental
researches in fundamental Fluid Dynamics. At its beginning,
activities were focused on Instabilities and transition to
turbulence in shear flows, but new topics have emerged :
geophysical flows, fluid-structure interactions, mechanics
and living systems…
Future Research Agenda
This AXA - École Polytechnique Chair aims to develop a new generation of engineers sufficiently
versed in biology to formulate original approaches to these diseases, and contribute to the
understanding of the role that arterial fluid mechanics play in the development of atherosclerosis.
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Chair in Neuroergonomics for flight safety
Prof. Frédéric Dehais - Amount granted = 1.000.000 €
Insight
Safety analysis reveals that the complexity of modern transportation aircraft
can overwhelm even the most experienced human operators when something
goes wrong. Generally, pilots are confused and face perseveration, a
behavior that leads them to neglect critical information (e.g. auditory alarms)
and to persist in irrational decision-making.

An innovative way to address these challenging safety issues is to
merge knowledge and methods from Neurosciences, Human
Factors and Computer Science.

The objective of the research program is to consider this approach
known as Neuroergonomics, to uncover the underlying neural
mechanisms of the perseveration phenomenon, to identify the risk
factors that provoke this behavior and to propose solutions to
mitigate its effects.

Indeed the Chair involves a unique methodology “from basic
protocols to ecological experiments” and intends to combine
cutting edge brain imaging, signal processing, and artificial
intelligence techniques, as well as physiological and eye tracking
techniques.
Future Research Agenda
Results from this project will be strongly beneficial for aviation safety as this domain is at the core of
ISAE. It is also intended that these results regarding perseverative behavior and irrational decisionmaking will be transferrable to other critical domains (e.g. automotive) and the rehabilitation of
patients with cerebral lesions.
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Chair in Financial Market Risk
Prof. Joel Peress - Amount granted = 2.000.000 €
Insight
On April 23rd, 2013, just after 6pm, all hell broke loose in Wall Street: markets dived in less than 2
minutes after computer hackers high-jacked the Associated Press Twitter account, falsely claiming
President Obama had been injured in 2 explosions at the White House. Stock markets took 5 minutes
to get back to normal, which illustrates the speed and tremendous impact of social and mass media
on asset prices.

“Everything is short lived in financial behavior and
knowledge” says Joel Peress, AXA Professor at
INSEAD Business School. His work on information in
financial
markets
challenges
conventional
models of propagation of information through
prices.

In a study covering two decades and several
countries, he found falls in trading volume (-12%)
and price volatility (7%) on days newspapers
went on strike. His analysis of return predictability
also indicates that it takes one day for news to
propagate to markets through newspapers.

Information-diet impact was strongest for smallcap stocks, commonly traded by retail investors
who rely more than big institutional investors on
the media for information.
Future Research Agenda
These findings demonstrate that the media contribute to the efficiency of the stock market by
improving the dissemination of information among investors and its incorporation into stock prices.
Prof. Peress will now explore the influence of social and digital media.
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Post Doctoral Fellowship – Miss Tiziana Beltrame
Mapping Cultural Heritage Risks: From Beauty to Fragility
Insight
This project seeks to analyze the preventive preservation practices of three European ethnographic
museums: the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren - currently under renovation-, the
Luigi Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome and the musée du quai
Branly in Paris).

The project aims at analyzing the preventive conservation practices
applied to the collections of European museums of ethnography.
Heritage collections are preserved through the implementation of a set
of continually changing measures that aim to minimize the risk of object
degradation. These practices mobilize the know-how of laboratory
science and technology, and could be said to create a new “art world”.

The constant redefinition of conservation practices has an effect on the
history of the collection. The technical manipulations involved in
ethnographic object conservation operations change the relationship
that scientists, curators and technicians have with the object. These
spheres of digital and physical object management are often based in
the background of museography, to the point of becoming invisible. In
fact, the objects’ properties are not the set attributes of matter, they are
processual and relational.
Future Research Agenda
This project will investigate the role of the object's constitutive material in the patrimonialization and
artification of ethnographic collections. In order to stabilize the object, links are established
between patrimonialization practices and those of laboratory sciences like chemistry, physics or
biology and technology. Computerization allows the object's variations to be recorded, enabling
patrimonial risk to be tracked and mapped. Miss Beltrame will explore how in these material
ecologies the artifact/art objects are defined and controlled. This project aims also to analyze the
changes in the field of material culture and museum studies.
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Chair for the Improvement of Healthcare Quality
Dr. Pedro Saturno - Amount granted = 1.000.000 €
Insight
The program will focus on structuring a system-wide initiative to improve the quality of the
services provided. This will imply basic implementation research around the different
strategies, which may act in synergy, while considering six key dimensions of quality
(effectiveness, efficiency, patient-centered care, accessibility, equity, safety).

In Mexico the right to health care is legally acknowledged and
there are multiple provisions to make it effective (program to
insure people without Social Security, nationwide free of charge
public programs targeted to pregnant women…). However,
data show that over 20% of the population is still uncovered,
maternal mortality is three times higher than the ratio in other
similar Latin-American countries, infant mortality is deceptively
high, and fully vaccinated children at 1-year of age is 60.7%.

The hypothesis is that a multifaceted intervention using the
principles of quality improvement and community involvement
may be successful to achieve the officially sought (but not well
implemented) equity in the provision of health services, and the
needed changes in health seeking behavior of the communities.
This approach combines several initiatives credited with
successful histories separately, but have never been
implemented jointly, and advances democratic development
and human rights.
Future Research Agenda
The research program will primarily focus on (i) Measurement tools and indicators for the different
quality dimensions; (ii) Factors, human and organizational, influencing quality and quality
improvement; (iii) Research on effective strategies for quality improvement.
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Chair in Household Finance and Insurance
Prof. Luigi Guiso - Amount granted = 500.000 €
Insight
What makes transactions possible? According to Prof. Guiso, the answer is trust. Any
financial exchange, whether it be an investment decision, the granting of a loan, the
purchase of an insurance policy or the acceptance of a check to settle a transaction, is an
exchange of money today for the promise of returning (more) money in the future.

“Today, household finance is a thriving, vibrant, selfstanding field” stated Professor Guiso. To give a
sense of the relevance of household finance, the
value of assets and liabilities held by households is
much larger in most countries than the financial
assets held by corporations. To the extent that
market size is a measure of importance, household
financial decisions deserve due attention.

Trust is even more important for households, whose
choices are not always easy to understand, due to
their extreme diversity. That’s why expanding
existing models of households’ financial decisions to
allow not only for diversity in preferences for risk but
also in peoples beliefs towards other people
behavior will better capture households interactions
with financial markets.
Future Research Agenda
Professor Guiso will study new models of behavior in the face of risk and uncertainty that might take
into account a richer characterization of preferences and additional dimensions of risk, including
social risk. The findings of this research program will be relevant for policy debates, such as those
related to the role of financial literacy and the regulation of intermediaries offering financial
products to households.
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Joint Research Initiative - Amount granted = 200.000 €
Insurance for building trust and enabling Big Data
Insight
Despite efforts of data administrative agencies (CNIL in France), and
development of data protection legislation, the huge extension of personal
data circulation is not under control. This concern is not shared by the public
and every individual contributes to the flaws of the system through their own
negligence so that we might face a “Fukushima of personal data”.

The project will redesign the conceptual framework of personal
data by moving towards a deeper understanding of what the
relationship to one’s data is constituted. Personal data must be
considered as a/ flows and not stocks, b/ transactional and not
personal, c/ distributed and not located, d/ embedded in
specific social worlds and not general and e/ regulated and not
owned.

The objective of this project is to study what could be the role of
insurance products in enhancing trust while Big Data
Technologies are expanding their reach. The project will address
the complete set of conditions required for an insurance policy to
enter the business of personal data by providing a guarantee on
the quality of information systems using personal traces data.
Principle Investigator
Sciences Po MédiaLab
Dominique Boullier
Project Manager
AXA Data Innovation Lab
Bruno Aïdan
Future Research Agenda

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The project aims at providing a full understanding of 1) risks related to data, 2) qualities and
loopholes of insurance offers, social networks policies and CGU about personal data
management, 3) perception of risk of the layman along with his/her experience related to
personal data hazards, 4) controversy on privacy and personal data, 5) actors and stakeholders
involved in the resolution of the dispute about privacy in the digital world.
Joint Research Initiative
Machine Learning for Large-Scale Insurance Data
Insight
Machine learning is a recent scientific domain, positioned between applied
mathematics, statistics and computer science. Its goals are the optimization,
control, and modeling of complex systems from examples. Machine learning
is characterized by the high quality and quantity of exchanges between
theory, algorithms and applications.

Research objectives are primarily focused on supervised learning,
unsupervised learning, parsimony and convex optimization.
However, given recent changes in our academic and societal
environments, we plan to put a stronger emphasis on three
themes described below: (a) trade-offs between computation
and statistics, (b) robustness of unsupervised learning, and
(c) structured prediction.

In the last few years, the expression “big data” has become a
keyword in many areas of science, engineering and industry.
However, the most impactful recent change is not the size of the
data but its ubiquity. The prevalence of data, which will be at the
core of the collaboration with AXA, is a strong opportunity for
machine learning to showcase its recent progress, and it comes
with new research questions.
Principle Investigator
PSL*
Alexandre d’Aspremont
Project Manager
AXA Global Direct
Emmanuel Pierron
Future Research Agenda
The research team strives to achieve a triple objective, which is necessary for high impact: rigorous
theory, efficient algorithms, and improved performance in applications. Therefore, the project aims
at bridging the gap between theory and practice in machine learning. This naturally leads to
scientific challenges such as fully automated data processing, incorporating structure & large-scale
learning.
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Questions?
Our institutional movie…
Thank you
And let’s keep in touch !
Raphaël Gusdorf – Research & Selection Office
raphael.gusdorf@axa.com
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MIHO JANVIER, Observatoire de Paris (France) - Solar flares, geomagnetic storms and their evolutions toward the Earth