Science Outreach Activities
Ever since I joined Inria, I have been aware of the need to valorize and demystify science among the general public and in particular younger generations. I therefore got invested in science popularization and outreach, through individual actions, nation-wide projects and the promotion and structuration of such activities in Inria. This page contains some examples of such activities.
Note that, as the goal is to reach the general public, most of the ressources are available in French only (so far 
). Therefore, more detailed information can be found on the French version of this page.
Individual activities
I am always eager to popularize my research activities and explain how research is conducted, and the notion of scientific proof, so crucial to face fake news and binary positions regarding technologies (particularly in mobile telephony), I have also developed science outreach activities in order to challenge the public on some counter-intuitive aspects of my field.
In practice, I therefore regularly contribute to events such as the "Fête de la Science" and the "Math C2+ days", in the form of conferences, debate conductions and creation of material in the spirit of unplugged computing.
(“Science en Direct” broadcast)
Education, Higher Education
and Research and astronaut Thomas Pesquet
responsible for Higher Education and Research
Credit G. Scagnelli
I have carried out actions such as :
- interviews (newspaper, TV channels, academics and science museums productions)
- contributing to blog articles
- writing science popularization articles
- creating material for group activities
- delivering courses for highschool teachers
- participating to roundtables about women in science, etc.
Management of science outreach projects on a national scale
In 2021, I had the privilege of representing Inria as "ambassador" for the "Fête de la Science" festival on the 30th anniversary of the event and I was interviewed as part of the Science & You conference.
In 2021, on behalf of Inria, I wrote and submitted the document SPOIL (Science Popularization and Outreach at Inria Level) in response to the Call for Expressions of Interest "Science with and for society" from the French national agency for research (ANR). Through this call, the ANR aimed at identifying the needs of academics, institutions and researchers, in term of science outreach, before launching targeted calls for projects (from 2022).
In 2022, I led the writing and submission of two ANR projects, both accepted, which I am currently leading:
- The MediaNum project (July 2022-July 2025) aims to produce videos illustrating the scientific results of the ANR research projects carried out by the institute. The objective is, beyond merely explaining research results, to demonstrate to the general public how science labs function and produce knowledge.
- The MediaGame project (Dec. 2022-Dec. 2025) focuses on the construction of a serious game (escape-card type) to uses curiosity and amusement as an educational vector.
The activities developped in MediaGame and MediaNum are created in cooperation with the scientists involved in the correspondant ANR research projects.
Promoting and structuring science outreach activities in the institute
I have been involved for more than 10 years in promoting science outreach events and productions of the institute as well as supporting researchers in their activities in this field. Indeed, I was first appointed science outreach referent at the Inria Grenoble center. In 2020, I became the “national referent for science outreach" within the Science Directorate of Inria. I manage the national team and I lead the network of Inria centers for science outreach.
Inria internal structuring actions
The french research programming act (2021-2030) strenghens the importance of science outreach for research institutes. This is illustrated by the creation of dedicated structures in academics institutes as well as specific calls for projects from the ANR.
Up until now, Inria only had an informal science popularization team. I have worked since 2022, jointly with the newly appointed Director of Culture and Scientific Information, on the creation of a dedicated administrative department to science outreach. Since 2023, I have also established a roadmap and its declination into annual objectives for the team, foreshadowing the creation of the department.
My objective in 2024 is to finalize the Inria science outreach department agenda for the period 2024-2028, which will be included in the institute's Objective and Performance Contract (COP).
This network constitutes the relay between Inria headquarters and the Inria scientists throughout France. Its goal is to coordinate actions and facilitate information exchange between Inria centers. Under my leadership, the network has gradually been revitalized: from 2022, regular thematic meetings were set up; in March 2023, I recruited an additional officer in charge of animating and coordinating the network.
The major recurring event of this network is the Inria science outreach seminar, which brings together about 40 Inria staff (half of thse are scientists and half are support staff). I led its organization in Sept. 2021 in Metz, in conjunction with the “Science & You” conference, where Inria presented 6 contributions. I organized the following seminar in March 2023 in Sophia-Antipolis, with a particular emphasis on (i) cooperations with science museums and exhibit halls (including a visit to Terra Numerica) (ii) connections between research and popularization activities, with a particular focus on the MediaGame and MediaNum ANR projects.
Activities to support, enhance and promote science outreach actions and resource productions of researchers
Since 2020, I have strived to ensure that science outreach activities are as integrated as possible into the research activity of my colleagues and are performed with the same amount of scientific rigor and feedback processing.
In concrete terms, in 2021, I organized the first entire half-day session dedicated to science outreach in the history of the institute's major annual event for researchers, the "Inria scientific days". In 2024, I have established, with the institute librarians specialized in science outreach, a gobal strategy to activities and material:
- in the tools used to records scientific productions, in particular the HAL platform,
- in the Inria project teams' annual scientific reports.
The overarching goal is to make it easier for scientists to integrate their activities on these media, and, for the institute, to extract relevant information from these tools.
Since scientific outreach often involves exchanges about science with general audience or professionals in the fields of communication or journalism, which is unusual for scientifists, I felt it was important to ensure that a suitable training offer was available to them. I have therefore worked on renewing the training contract offer for scientists in 2020, enriching it with a distance learning, video-conferencing mode, in a smaller group (1 trainer for 2 scientists). This format, which is shorter and more personalized than standard training, is also easier to implement as it eliminates physical constraints, enabling greater responsiveness to researchers' requests.
Furthermore, convinced of (i) the importance of developping science outreach in a variety of forms and (ii) the difficulty of accessing some of them (programming a serious game, for example, or setting up a thematic exhibition), I set out to create a both diversified and structured offer of turnkey solutions of science outreach activities: the researcher can then focus on the message he or she wishes to convey to the audience, rather than on implementation issues.
I therefore developed a strategy based on partnerships with associations, foundations and public structures to benefit from their expertise in terms of resource production and distribution network. In particular, in 2022, I coordinated, with the Inria project manager in charge of scientific outreach partnerships, the creation or update of partnership agreements with:
- The Deb'Acteur cooperative for the creation of debates on fictitious laws illustrating the societal impact of digital technology in society.
- The Arbre des Connaissances association for the creation of debate role play on realistic scenarios of anticipation of some societal transformations induced by digital technology. It is aimed at high school students, to train them to construct arguments and to understand the position of others.
- Esprit Sorcier TV for video creation and broadcast on their TV channel as well as on YouTube.
- The France IOI association for the creation of online scientific riddles, notably within the "Castor competition".
These agreements have enriched existing partnerships, the main of which concern the scientific culture centers Universcience, and the national science fair called Fête de la Science, and supports to associations, such as Animath which offers a range of activities for pupils, including events to promote science among young women (RJMI), and Class'Code, which produces and distributes training and educational resources on computational thinking.
I am convinced of the importance on improving visibility of scientific outreach activities of researchers both internally and externally.
Internally, the challenge is to make the activity attractive and recognized in careers. Since 2020, I have been leading the drafting of science outreach activity reports at Inria, presenting both actions piloted at national level and locally, as well as those carried out autonomously by researchers. This document, for internal distribution, provides a general and (almost) exhaustive view of the scientific outreach actions of the institute.
Externally, the dissemination relies largely on the networks of associations and partners. In the philosophy of open science, I would like to see the widest possible dissemination of scientific outreach productions. Thus, all Inria events and productions should be accessible free of charge and on a permanent basis. To this end, I am collaborating with the Inria librarians and communication project managers to establish a coherent dissemination strategy on the online supports HAL, Interstices, the Pixees resources site, the UNIT digital university, the Canal-U website, the Esprit Sorcier TV channels, and all of the institute's partners.
As for physical resources for scientific popularization, we work in partnership with museums and sites for the dissemination of scientific and technical culture, in particular with systems for lending exhibition modules, joint creation with Inria team, or duplication of modules.
Finally, in 2024, I launched a reflection project to creacte a new web platform for scientific outreach, bringing together all institute's productions on a single, clear, structured platform.