Tr a i n i n g , s h a r i n g , f i n d i n g
applications
Cataloguing ant species, Santo expedition, Vanuatu
Annual report • 2006
••• Supporting
scientific communities in the South
••• Applications
••• knowledge
and consulting
sharing
Satellite view of Lake Chad
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Suppor ting scientific
communities in the South
A country cannot develop without a well-established national scientific community capable of
producing the knowledge needed for economic growth. The IRD differs from other French research
institutions in that part of its mission is to meet the scientific training needs of its Southern partners.
The Institute has long been fostering the emergence of talented researchers through a range of
individual grants and by supporting the creation and consolidation of new research teams in the
South. In 2006, two new avenues were explored: assistance for designing and organising teaching
modules, and one-day meetings bringing together grantees and team leaders so as to meet
students’ needs more effectively.
••• Support for teams
Since 2002, the IRD has been supporting the emergence and
consolidation of research teams in the South by selecting “new IRD
partner teams” (JEAIs) which are partnered by IRD units to help them
build up their self-reliance and increasingly integrate into the international scientific community. This year 11 more JEAIs were selected,
joining the 21 created earlier. All in all 32 teams from Africa, Latin
America and Asia are receiving three years’ scientific and financial
support from the IRD. The first practical results are emerging now.
••• Individual support
JEAIs by research programme
The Institute gave 179 grants to nationals from Southern countries, including 129 doctoral thesis grants, 5
Master’s grants, 20 in-service training grants and 25 scientific exchange grants.
With this system, the IRD can provide assistance at different stages of a researcher’s career:
Applicants
Duration
Purpose
Procedure
Doctoral thesis
grants
Post-doctoral grants
Master’s degree holders
Up to 3 years
Doctorate holders
2 years
In-service training
grants
Scientific exchange
grants
Researchers,
engineers, technicians
Researchers
12 months
initial training of
young Southern researchers
post-doc with a view to future
research work in the South
in-service training
or retraining
to encourage mobility
work and supervision
in IRD teams and partners’ teams
jointly financed by IRD and
Southern host institution
IRD/Southern host institution
partnerships
IRD/Southern host institution
partnerships
12 months
Grants by research programme
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Development
and globalisation
16
Natural hazards
and climate
37
Themes
Natural hazards and climate
Sustainable ecosystem management
Water resources and uses
Food security in the South
Public health
Development and globalisation
TOTAL
Total
4
5
4
5
7
7
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One JEAI, the Symbiosis and
Environment Unit in Morocco,
won the Research for the
Environment award. Another has
obtained funding under the
CORUS programme (Coopération
pour la recherche universitaire
et scientifique) funded by the
French foreign ministry’s Priority
Solidarity Fund.
Sustainable ecosystem
management
26
Public health
34
Food security in the
South
29
Water resources
and uses
Study of saline soils, Thailand.
Annual report • 2006
Supporting training activities with an electronic platform for exchanges among partners is a step in the IRD’s plan to
prolong its support for young researchers and new teams beyond the financial assistance period.
••• Networking
••• Teaching modules strengthen ties
with universities
A first step in strengthening ties between the IRD and
existing French/Latin American academic networks was
taken in 2006, mainly through the MAE PREFALC
programme, a regional academic cooperation networking
arrangement. Two Master’s teaching modules were
designed in the region, one in geography and one in
modelling for irrigation, involving six universities and the IRD.
In Africa, the IRD joined forces with Orléans, Paris V and
other universities to set up teaching modules, particularly
modules on geographical information systems and
demography. Designed as decision aids, these teaching
modules will be incorporated into distance learning
platforms. In Senegal and Benin, the Institute organised two
Master’s courses, one on water and one on medical
entomology.
To help Southern teams integrate more easily into international networks, the IRD organised a number of regional and
theme-based workshops. The Young Researchers’ Days in Dakar and the first JEAI encounter-workshop (which brought
together 33 new partner teams in a videoconference between the IRD centres in Bolivia, Burkina Faso and Paris) show
that this approach is altogether appropriate and useful.
To complement the specialist training dispensed to new teams and
young researchers, the IRD launched new general training modules to
assist them in the other aspects of their profession – project
management, submitting research proposals, team management,
scientific publications and documentation monitoring.
Based mainly on the Institute’s experience in collaborative work with
other French actors in research for development, this use of networking
is a significant start to the IRD’s policy of concerted action with its
partners in AIRD (Agence inter-établissements de recherche pour le
développement).
•••••• Contact: dsf@ird.fr
Remote sensing and geographical information systems
Central Africa’s higher education and research establishments need access to the new geographical data acquisition and processing technologies. To facilitate this, a ten-day post-graduate initiation
seminar was organised, leading to a professional Master’s. It was jointly financed by the IRD and the Agence universitaire de la francophonie (AUF) and involved the University of Orléans and
Central African national universities. The course, led by a team of 11 French and Cameroonian specialist teachers, brought together some twenty young teacher-researchers in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
The seminar should help disseminate a sustainable approach to environmental and land use management and promote the emergence of local expertise in cartographic design. The IRD and the
universities worked well together, and this experience could pave the way for an innovative distance learning programme.
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Applications and consulting
To fulfil its missions the IRD must promote and find
applications for its competencies and research
findings. It has an active policy in this regard,
transferring knowledge to industrial partners and
conducting expert group reviews to help policy
makers in their decisions.
••• Economic applications
The IRD continues to protect the innovations that emerge
from its laboratories. In 2006 six new patent applications
were filed, bringing the Institute’s total patent portfolio to
59, of which 45% are in biotechnology. Twenty-one
patents (35%) are jointly owned – 11 (52%) with private
firms and 10 (48%) with the academic sector. Three
patents are jointly held with Southern universities.
Seventeen contracts for exploitation of IRD intellectual
property rights are currently ongoing, including seven
patent license agreements.
Industrial partnerships made headway in 2006. Eighteen
contracts with manufacturing companies were signed,
including four new research contracts, two technology
transfer contracts and a contract granting software utilisation rights. The Institute acquired three new industrial
partners. One is the Brazilian pharmaceuticals company
LAFEPE, with a licensing option agreement to use chinoleine in the treatment of leishmaniasis. Another is the
recent French start-up Gaia, with a contract granting it
rights to the use of satellite image processing algorithms
developed by the Espace service unit. The third is the
Société des eaux de Marseille, which awarded the IRD a
research contract concerning treatment of residual
sludge from sewage treatment plants.
The IRD also took action to raise awareness about
research applications and intellectual property, with a
training session on contracts, in Montpellier, and another
on database protection, in Dakar.
Improving tea quality in China
A bio-organic soil fertilisation process patented by the IRD in Sri Lanka and China has been
in experimental use since 2003 under the scientific responsibility of the Biodiversity and soil
functioning unit in collaboration with the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou.
The results, presented in October 2006 in Guangdong province, show an improvement in
the physical quality of soils treated by this method, increased biodiversity in the plots concerned and an improvement in the quality of the tea harvested from
treated plots. The IRD has suggested a transfer strategy that would involve the Chinese
researchers forming a company to disseminate the technology in China.
••• Scientific advice for policy makers
At the request of policy decision makers, the IRD carries out expert group reviews on specific
scientific issues related to development. For these reviews, the Institute brings together
multidisciplinary panels of experts who search out and analyse the existing scientific literature on
the question, write a thorough report and make practical recommendations.
Taking a new approach to the transfer and dissemination of findings from these reviews, the
Institute organised debates so as to generate an exchange of ideas between decision makers
and professionals and stakeholders on the ground. The expert group review on Natural
Substances in French Polynesia: Utilisation Strategies was presented at a seminar in Tahiti
attended by the French Polynesian government Ministers of education, research and agriculture
along with researchers and businesses in the natural substances sector. The review pointed the
way towards an original policy enabling Polynesia to benefit economically from its natural
substances. It laid the basis for discussing how to put together a multidisciplinary training
programme and how best to use the Gepsun technology platform (a jointly facility involving the
IRD, Cirad, the University of French Polynesia and Polynesian businesses).
The dissemination meeting for the review on Invasive Species in the New Caledonian Archipelago
drew 200 participants to Nouméa to discuss how to set up an effective biosecurity plan for the
region. This would involve strengthening measures to control invasive species, creating a
quarantine system, setting up an inter-province surveillance system and rapid response
programmes and running information drives. Civil society, which has a significant role to play in
protecting native species, was well represented in the discussions.
•••••• Contact: dev@ird.fr
As well as research, the IRD’s mission includes
disseminating the scientific information it produces
to a variety of audiences and sharing knowledge
with its partners in the Southern countries where its
researchers work. Books, databases, symposia,
films and the media are all employed to this end.
Media visibility remained high in 2006, with more than
2,000 articles published in the press about the work of the
IRD and its researchers, prompted by scientific news
bulletins and press releases issued by the Institute. The
IRD website (with an English version on
http://www.ird.fr/us) receives nearly four million hits a
year, and there are several other channels to keep the
Institute’s work in the public eye. The magazine Sciences
au Sud (with English, Spanish and Portuguese
summaries) is disseminated in some 120 countries and
online*. Canal IRD** issued 37 new short videos this year,
and the image base Indigo base*** offers 37,000 photos.
Books, maps, atlases, films, CD-ROMs and interactive
DVDs all help to bring the work of the research teams to
a broader audience. Among the fifteen books produced
in 2006 were Océan et Climat and an interactive sea floor
map.
Sciences au Sud exhibition, Niamey (Niger)
Annual report • 2006
Knowledge sharing
Science festival, Nouméa
On the audiovisual side, more than twenty films were produced or co-produced in 2006. La citadelle
assiégée, a fiction film co-produced with the French TV channel TF1, about termites and ants in
Burkina Faso, made a big impression on its release in October.
Specialist scientific publications are accessible online via the Horizon-Plein Textes database
(http://www.documentation.ird.fr) and at the Institute’s 15 documentation centres in Africa, Latin
America and the Pacific. The IRD is also playing an active part in setting up the HAL open archives
platform, a publications depository shared by all the French research bodies and universities.
The task of disseminating research findings to the general public in an accessible form gained fresh
momentum with awareness raising actions on water, climate, desertification, biodiversity and
sustainable development. Science cafés, educational activities and travelling exhibitions (shown in
more than 40 countries) also helped to raise public awareness of the importance of research. The
exhibition on African crocodiles and fish, jointly produced with the Réunion des Musées nationaux,
drew more than 100,000 visitors in Paris.
The foreign affairs Ministry has entrusted the IRD with its Fonds de solidarité prioritaire for outreach
work on science and technology in ten African countries. In 2006 this work drew several thousand
people, especially young people.
* at http://www.ird.fr/fr/actualites/journal
**http://www.canal.ird.fr
***http://www.ird.fr/indigo/index2.pgi
•••••• Contact: dic@ird.fr
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