GOVERNANCE AND BUDGET

GOVERNANCE & BUDGET

Governance and budget

The 3IA Côte d’Azur Institute is coordinated by Université Côte d’Azur in partnership with the key highereducation, research and innovation institutions in the Nice Sophia Antipolis region: Inria, CNRS, INSERM, and EURECOM.

In December 2021, SKEMA Business School, which had supported the project since its inception, formally joined the consortium. MINES ParisTech, which participates in 3IA Côte d’Azur efforts through joint research actions and projects around training in AI, has also expressed its desire to join and formal discussions are in progress.

The overall budget of the Institute was €49.5M over 4 years when the project was approved. With SKEMA joining the consortium, the global budget now amounts to €51.5M

Governance

/ EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

The management is ensured by the director assisted by an executive director, a scientific director and a deputy scientific director. This Executive Committee makes all the decisions, after consulting with the restricted steering committee.

/ INSTITUTE COUNCILS

The Restricted Steering Committee is a key body: It includes the representatives of the partner institutions and meets every two weeks to discuss the strategic orientations and the actions of the Institute. In an extended form (Extended Steering Committee), it includes all the structures involved in the Institute (such as labs or graduate schools) and other representatives of the ecosystem. This extended committee meets twice a year to give advice on the Institute’s positioning within the overall UCA community policy.

The Scientific Council leds by the Scientific Director. Its mission is to give advice on the scientific and training program, and to referee the selection of new Chairs, PhD students and post-doctoral researchers.

Local Coordination Committee : In order to better coordinate the Institute’s strategy with respect to the ecosystem, a monthly Local Coordination Committee led by the director of 3IA brings together all the public actors of the Region such as local authorities, industrial network representatives, the MIA, and the observatory OTESIA and coordinates AI-related activities in the region.

Industrial Council: For advice on its innovation program, the Institute calls this Council composed of representatives of partner companies and clusters. It is headed jointly by the Institute’s director and by a representative of a partner company.

An Advisory Committee should be set up in 2022. It will be composed of members external to the consortium and will include at least 1/3 of industry representatives. The constitution of this committee will match the strategic committee of the UCA community. This committee is expected to meet once a year to give its opinion on the Institute’s orientations.

/ OPERATIONAL LEVEL

At an operational level, the Executive Committee is assisted by those in charge of specific actions: a project manager for all the Institute’s activities, two coordinators for relations with companies, a training coordinator, and a digital communication officer. The members of the Executive Com-

mittee and the people in charge of actions meet regularly to discuss the strategy implementation. A seminar was also organized in 2021 for all Member staff involved in implementing the project (more than 50 people) at the initiative of the Institute for the purpose of strengthening the sense of belonging, reinforcing coordination around the project and reflecting on actions undertaken together.

An administrative and financial coordination unit headed by the executive director of 3IA

shares information with the administration of partner institutions: rules for the use of resources and recruitment; legal documents (consortium agreements, conventions, etc.); organization of the declaration of expenses for reimbursement and financial statements and monitoring of the project progress indicators.

A Business Relations Coordination Unit, headed by the 3IA coordinators, meets regularly to monitor the Institute’s relations and contracts with its partners. A common CRM tool has been set up for this purpose. This Unit also supervises and coordinates the Techpool’s activity. The follow-up of training courses and students is ensured by the Training coordinator of the Institute in collaboration with the partner institutions and the components of Université Côte d’Azur. A pedagogical engineer has recently been hired to strengthen the 3IA student network.

/ COMMUNICATION

A shared unit has been set up to coordinate the initiatives of all partners in order to maximize the impact of communication about the Institute’s actions. This unit is naturally well connected with similar services of the network of 3IA institutes.

/ HARDWARE-SOFTWARE PLATFORMS

Quality and ambition of the hardware-software platforms: all researchers of the Institute (chairholders and their teams) have access to the computing infrastructure (OPAL project) shared by Institute members, which already offers a reasonable computing capacity for AI and HPC. In addition to these local infrastructures, access is provided at the national level to France’s most powerful supercomputer for research, named after Jean Zay. The Institute contributed to OPAL, the local computing infrastructure, by purchasing a cluster node with several GPUs, which will be used in priority by 3IA researchers and engineers.

Budget

/ PARTNERS’ CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE OVERALL BUDGET

The global budget now amounts to €51.5M, broken down as follows:

• €19.5M will be contributed by the public partner institutions. • €16M is expected to be funded by the

French State through the ANR. Of the €16M funded by the ANR, €4M is conditional on the justification of contributions valued at 16 M€ by the partner companies, €4M of which must be in cash.

PIA grant increase requested after mid-term evaluation

€3M €3M

potential increase in investment by 2023

Investment increase achieved in 2021

€16M €16M €16M

required by 2023

Members PIA Grant Companies

€10,8M already raised in 2021

/ BUDGET STRATEGY

Human Ressources expenses

HR expenses, the largest budget item, were committed during the first year of the project so that the activity of the Chairs could start quickly. The recruitment of PhD students and post-doctoral researchers as well as the bonuses of the Chairs are financed from the PIA grant. Operating packages, co-financed by the PIA and by the partner institutions, are made available to the Chairs each year.

Contributions of the industrial partners

Other resources will be financed by contributions of the industrial partners as defined in the contracts. At the start of the project, 62 companies supported 3IA Côte d'Azur by committing to carry out collaborative research and development projects with the Institute for a total estimated amount of €18.7M. To date, 3IA Côte d'Azur is in contact with more than 140 companies for actual or planned collaborations. 57 collaboration contracts have been signed with companies, bringing in more than €4.27M in cash to the Members. At the end of 2021, the investment of these companies for these contracts is more than €10.8M. The potential investment of companies is estimated at €19M by 2023. In order to further increase the momentum, the Institute plans to set up an incentive system for researchers who engage in collaborations with companies. This system will be financed by the resources provided by the companies. In contact with +140 companies for actual or planned collaborations. 57 signed contracts + €4.27M in cash to the Members. €10.8M of investments from companies

Other funds

The Institute also aims to raise other funds, notably through grants (CASA, for example, provides an annual grant of €30,000 to 3IA), or by responding to national or European calls for proposals for Chairs or structuring projects (e.g., a project submitted in response to the call for expressions of interest "Digital demonstrators").

69 % of the overall budget has been committed to date, which demonstrates progress in line with the initial roadmap.

The actions already undertaken, the increase in contributions from academic partners and the results already achieved in terms of business investment seem to argue in favor of a re-evaluation of the PIA grant up to 19 M€.

This reassessment - subject to the jury's approval - would allow the Institute to continue to build the momentum already initiated in favor of its ecosystem.