Training, sharing,
finding applications
Capacity-building
support for Southern
scientific communities
170
Applications
and
consulting
FELLOWSHIPS AWARDED TO
SCIENTISTS FROM SOUTHERN COUNTRIES
Knowledge
sharing
68
PATENTS
HELD
Annual report 2008 s
Capacity-building support for Southern
scientific communities
Building up Southern countries’ scientific capacities is vital
for developing research for development. The IRD is helping
to structure research in the South with ISO 9001 certified tools
covering all aspects of its Southern partners’ needs. Tools include
fellowships, support for emerging research teams, theme-based
structuring projects and joint professorial chairs. In addition,
the Ministry for Foreign and European affairs has commissioned
the IRD to manage four programmes funded by the Priority
Solidarity Fund. These are CORUS, AIRES-Sud, RIPIECSA and Sud
Expert Plantes. Between them, all these provisions are designed
to assist Southern teams from the moment they are formed until
they achieve international recognition, enabling them to conduct
research projects at ever higher levels of autonomy and selfreliance.
At the heart of these arrangements is the provision for emerging
IRD partner teams (JEAI, Jeunes Equipes Associées à l’IRD). This
system is designed to consolidate recently-formed research teams
and help them become lastingly established. By contributing to
their operating costs (up to €60,000 over three years), the IRD
gives them the means to establish themselves as leading teams in
their fields and to develop their networks.
Individual training is also essential for developing a team’s skills.
The IRD provides support for doctoral students, researchers,
engineers and technicians from Southern partner laboratories. In
2008 the Institute provided fellowships to support 170 individual
training or capacity building projects and 125 thesis projects. The
Institute also has other ways to assist young research scientists,
such as "doctoral encounters" where they can exchange ideas and
learn more about various aspects of the researcher’s job. In 2008 a
new award for excellence was introduced: the Laurence Vergne Prize
for development research, which rewards two outstanding doctoral
theses by members of IRD teams.
To better meet the needs of IRD and partner institutes’ research
teams, those programs more specifically intended for tenured staff
of all grades were evaluated in 2008 and have been simplified as
a result.
Achievements of an emerging glacial hydrology team
Natural and man-made climate change is generating major changes in hydrologic regimes connected tropical glacier melt.
In the Andes particularly, global warming is having a major impact on water resources, irrigation and hydroelectricity.
In Bolivia, a JEAI called GRANT (Glaciers and water resources in the tropical Andes) was set up to acquire expertise
on water resources deriving from high-altitude catchments. The team is approaching the subject from three angles:
quantifying glacier retreat; studying the impact of this shrinkage on water resources; and developing models for fifty-year
forecasts. Another strand of the research concerns other hazards connected with glacier retreat.
Entomology training/Benin.
sInstitut de recherche pour le développement
The team has set up a photogrammetry and remote sensing unit for water resources that has become a benchmark in its
field throughout South America. The JEAI has also developed a number of regional and international partnerships that
have proved determinant in terms of information sharing, increasing autonomy and fund raising. Team member Alvaro
Sorucco, writing his thesis on an IRD grant, won the Christiane Doré Prize which rewards not only research quality but
also the student’s perseverance and commitment to development.
Designed for more experienced researchers, the program of joint
professorial chairs is designed to encourage or assist partnerships
between one Northern and one Southern researcher working on a
common research project combined with a Master’s or doctoral
training course and/or application work. Two projects were selected
in 2008; one was a physical oceanography project in Benin, the
other a study of international migration in South Africa. They are
offshoots of two major programs the IRD has been involved in,
Multidisciplinary Analysis of the African Monsoon (AMMA) and
Transit Migration in Africa (ANR Mitrans).
Backing up all these mechanisms are the IRD’s theme-based
structuring projects. These are designed to intensify relations
between the IRD and its partners in the work of consolidating
Southern research institutions, developing their capacities and
enhancing national and international recognition of those working
in Southern research. For example, in 2008 the Institute supported
several summer schools, including one on land degradation
processes in South Africa, and contributed to seven regional
and international Master’s programs including one in Bolivia
on environmental science. 2008 also saw several cross-cutting
projects designed with the future in mind, such as a training
course in Benin on scientific report-writing for entomology research
projects.
[ Contact: dsf@ird.fr ]
Two doctoral students win
Laurence Vergne Prizes
Emerging team/Peru.
Migration: joint chair with the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
The purpose of the joint chair on international migration and urban governance is to address the question of migration
in South Africa at the local level, although it is now the responsibility of the central government. The joint chair project
was launched in March 2008 at a public conference on the state of progress in research on migration in South Africa,
where work on this issue is still at the embryonic stage.
The Laurence Vergne Prizes reward excellence in theses written by
members of IRD teams. They were awarded for the first time on
21 November 2008, in Montpellier. The first prize-winner, biologist
Mathilde Savy, wrote her thesis on dietary diversity and nutritional status
of women in the Sahel zone. Her supervisors were Yves Martin-Prével
and Francis Delpeuch of the "Nutrition, diet and society" research unit.
The second prize-winner was Venezuelan agricultural scientist José
Bustamante, working in the "Diversity and adaptation of cultivated
plants" unit. His thesis on cloning and characterisation of the
genes involved in the ripening of coffee berries was supervised
by Alexandre de Kochko and supported by an IRD grant.
The chair is the result of collaboration that began in 2005 and continued with the «Transit migration in Africa» project
(ANR Mitrans), which focused on how people perceive migration. The joint chair strengthens the capacities of the
Forced Migration Studies program at the University of the Witwatersrand. The University already works on this issue
with neighbouring States and with countries in French-speaking Africa, mainly through training, hosting students and
designing projects.
Annual report 2008 s
Applications and consulting
The IRD reorganised and consolidated its work on finding
applications for its research results and putting its skills and
knowledge to use for the benefit of the socio-economic world
and the countries of the South. The main strands in this sphere
are consulting, intellectual property management, transferring
technology and know-how, business formation and developing
industrial partnerships. Cooperative ventures with Southern
socio-economic actors also received a boost in 2008.
Expert group reviews
and consulting
Work began on two new expert group reviews in the course of the
year. Their subjects are
- Vector Control in France, commissioned by the Ministries
responsible for research, health, ecology and home affairs,
- Energy in the Development of New Caledonia, commissioned by
the New Caledonian government.
The IRD also signed nearly a dozen institutional consulting contracts
with commissioning bodies such as the La Réunion regional
environment authority, the Agence Française de Développement
and two private companies, Cr’Eole (French Guiana) and Caraïbes
Environnement.
Intellectual property
and technology transfer
Leishmaniasis survey/Senegal.
Much was done in 2008 to strengthen the protection of research
results through patents, trade marks, software patents etc., and
to transfer more of our innovative technologies, systematically
involving Southern economic actors and partners.
The Institute paid particular attention to detecting innovation
in its laboratories, with innovation delegates more routinely
present in the research teams. With this support, the number of
sInstitut de recherche pour le développement
patents applications tripled, from four in 2007 to twelve in 2008.
This brought the total number of active priority patents to 68.
Consistent with its mission, wherever possible the IRD owns its
patents jointly with Southern partners; this is now the case with
over 10% of patents. Researchers in Indonesia developed a process
for bioconverting palm kernel meal, a by-product of the palm oil
industry, for use in aquaculture. The process is now patented.
The purpose of patent protection is to make technology transfer
a reality and an economic good, in partnership with Southern
stakeholders. Nineteen patent license contracts were signed and
income from such licenses is increasing constantly. Notable among
the license agreements signed in 2008 are the following:
- one with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) to
develop molecules to combat leishmaniasis;
- one with Biovaxim to develop an AIDS vaccine.
The IRD’s license revenues today come primarily from a licence held
by Nutriset, a company that produces and markets a nutritional
product to combat malnutrition in children.
Breakdown of patents by discipline
Livestock 7%
Depollution 9%
26% Therapeutics
Fertilisers and crop
protection 11%
Diet and
nutrition 11%
Genetics and plant
breeding 12%
12% Diagnostics
12% Instruments
Support for innovative company
formation and project maturation
The IRD continued its support for researchers forming innovative
companies such as Bluecham in Nouméa. This was set up by one
of the Institute’s senior researchers who in 2007 won the Research
Ministry’s 9th national competition for innovative technology
company formation. Bluecham markets an environmental decision
aid system that incorporates the latest developments in remote
sensing, Internet technology and applied mathematics. Some
ten new emerging projects were identified in Dakar, Nouméa
and Montpellier, with a view to the Institute supporting them
and assisting their progress. Among other things they concern
commercial development of natural substances, physical-chemical
analyses in marine environments, and oyster mushroom production
in Senegal.
To facilitate the socio-economic application of research results,
the IRD also provides upstream help for researchers maturing their
development work. Based on assessments by the IRD technology
transfer committee, the Institute financed more than 17 projects in
2008. One was the creation of a prototype farm to produce larvae
for fish farm feed; another, characterisation of molecules to treat
Chagas disease; yet another, the construction of a respiration meter
to monitor mushroom growth.
Industrial partnerships
The IRD endeavours to set up joint actions with socio-economic
actors working with the South, using instruments such as the
French government’s CIFRE agreements (industrial agreements
for training through research) or funding connected with French
competitiveness clusters. Contracts signed with manufacturers
amount to 1.4 million − some fifty public-private contracts involving
research collaboration with industrial firms or service providers.
Among the firms concerned are Bayer (Germany), Sumitomo (Japan)
(for mosquito control), Sanofi-Aventis, Goro-Nickel (for monitoring
environmental pollution), Seadev (characterisation of bacteria
useful for medical environments).
The IRD benefits much from the synergy generated by the nine
competitiveness clusters it is involved in. They are Mer-Bretagne
(Sea-Nergie) in Brittany; Q@liMEDiterranée (diet and quality of life
in the Mediterranean) in Languedoc-Roussillon; Pôle Risques (risk
management and vulnerable territories) in Provence-Alpes-Côted’Azur (PACA); MSS (sea, safety and sustainable development) also
in PACA; Orpheme (emerging and orphan diseases) in LanguedocRoussillon and PACA; Qualitropic (diet and nutrition in tropical
environments) in La Réunion; Aerospace Valley (aerospace and
onboard systems) in Midi-Pyrénées; Cancer, Bio, Santé (organics,
cancer and health) in Midi-Pyrénées; and finally CAPENERGIE in PACA.
In this system the Fonds Unique Interministériel calls for projects
and applications are submitted, as for example the ITIS project
with the Mer Bretagne competitiveness cluster. VAXILEISH, a
leishmaniasis project approved by the Orpheme cluster, was
granted €1 million towards its total of €1.7 million.
As part of the drive to increase practical technology transfer to the
South, a framework agreement was signed with the University of
Dakar for a project to create a business incubator. Exchanges were
also established to set up synergy with the United Nations Industrial
Development Organisation, the African Intellectual Property
Organisation and the Dakar Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
All in all these economic transfer and consultancy arrangements
enable the IRD to take up new challenges to bring research results
and economic applications together.
[ Contact: dev@ird.fr ]
Food supplement.
Bioconverting palm kernel meal/Indo
nesia.
Annual report 2008 s
Knowledge sharing
Since its founding in 1942, the Institute has gathered an evergrowing body of information on the countries of the South. It
has a duty to make that information available to its partners and
share it with the broader public concerned by issues to do with
development in tropical environments.
Disseminating scientific information
With an archive of nearly 70,000 publications (37,000 of which can
be accessed online via the Horizon Pleins Textes database), the
IRD is a valuable source of scientific information on the Southern
countries. These documents are widely consulted, with 4000 visits
and 5000 publications downloaded each month from the Institute’s
website. The IRD also helps its Southern scientific partners
disseminate their publications on the Internet. In 2008 it ran six
projects, in Senegal, Burkina Faso and Madagascar, to digitise
theses and scientific journals and post them online.
The SPHAERA map collection comprises 18,000 references,
including nearly 3000 maps available online, in fields ranging
from soil science and geology to demography and linguistics. The
Indigo photo library possesses 40,000 photographs about Southern
societies, all available online.
Films and videos are also available, making the IRD collections
together a tremendously rich media library on science for the South.
visitors, who consulted 24 million pages − 16% up on the previous
year. The site’s forthcoming new design should make it even more
popular and help to make the work of the Institute better known.
The IRD published some thirty books, atlases and CD-ROMs in 2008
and a number of TV films were broadcast, several of which won
awards. Also worth mentioning is the DVD Le Récif Corallien, jointly
produced with the Centre National de Documentation Pédagogique
as part of International Coral Reef Year. Notable among the books
published (several of them jointly published) were the following:
- Agricultures singulières,
- La Terre au cœur de la science,
- Aires protégées, espaces durables ?,
- Mentawai, l’île des hommes fleurs,
- La biodiversité au quotidian,
- L’atlas urbain: Ouagadougou.
Many IRD books are translated into the language of the country
where the research was done, so that the Institute’s results will
be more effectively accessible to its partners. In 2008 ten books
were co-edited in French and another language and published by
"delegate" publishers, mainly in Latin America (Mexico, Peru and
Columbia). One of these was on traditional pharmacopoeias.
Communicating: multimedia
and print
Discovering French Polynesia’s
herbarium.
In 2008 nearly 2000 articles about the IRD and its work were
published in the press. Most were based on the Institute’s
monthly scientific news sheets, which report on its scientists’
major findings. The newsletter Sciences au Sud, with a print run
of 15,000, reaches an even wider public via the internet: 149,582
pages were consulted online in 2008.
The website with its abundant content − online feature articles
on major development issues, Canal IRD with its videos, etc. − is
proving very popular. In 2008 it received more than four million
sInstitut de recherche pour le développement
Documentation centre/Niamey.
Raising public awareness and
mobilising the young
The general public is showing increasing interest in science but
considers it is not sufficiently informed about it. At the same time
young people are turning away from scientific careers. The IRD
is an active participant in the drive to bring science and society
closer together, in Southern countries as well as in France. Debates,
talks, science cafés and film screenings all offer opportunities for
the public to encounter science in the making. Another effective
way of raising awareness is the travelling exhibitions the Institute
produces and takes around France and partner countries. These
concern major issues in research for development such as water,
climate, natural hazards and population. In 2008 IRD exhibitions
were shown in some forty countries and as many locations in
Metropolitan France. The IRD also worked with the Palais de la
Découverte science museum in Paris to mount an exhibition on
ants and termites there. It was a great success, visited by nearly
350,000 people. Another Parisian partner was the Cité des Sciences
et de l’Industrie, where a conference on malaria was held.
To raise awareness among young people, the IRD set up 25 new
science clubs, with the focus on climate change, biodiversity and
health. An international AIDS seminar in Bobo Dioulasso (Burkina
Faso) in December brought together more than 350 young people
to meet and receive advice from fifteen scientists and doctors.
Most of the actions funded by the Priority Solidarity Fund on
"Promoting scientific culture", which the Foreign Affairs Ministry
has commissioned the IRD to conduct, take place in Africa. In 2008
the IRD ran more than 150 projects in ten African countries and
organised a number of training courses in scientific mediation.
Sharing resources in this way and disseminating scientific
information to Southern countries helps to reduce the scientific and
digital divide between North and South and raise young people’s
awareness of the usefulness of science as a factor for progress.
[ Contact: dic@ird.fr ]
Science festival/Paris.
FAUNAFRI software package (on African fish), prizewinner at Saint-Dié-des-Vosges.
Annual report 2008 s