Short Bio

Stéphane Grumbach, senior scientist at Inria, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology, is a specialist of data systems. He has worked on theoretical issues in informatics regarding the processing of complex data types, such as spatial, statistical, as well as biological, and has designed the first compression algorithm, Biocompress, for DNA sequences. His interests have evolved to more global questions related to the impact of digital systems on society, such as the geopolitical implications of the digital, which triggers new imbalances and asymmetries between nations ; the contrasting visions promoted in different regions of the world, such as North America, East Asia and Europe ; the emergence of a control society, while human societies are facing the challenges of a more constrained global environment ; and more generally the contemporaneity of the anthropocene and the digital revolution.

He joined IXXI, the Complex Systems Institute at ENS Lyon, in 2014, is affiliated with the GEODE Project on the Geopolitics of the Datasphere, and works in collaboration with the Research Institute on Humanity and Nature, RIHN in Kyoto. He teaches Digital Economy in SciencesPo Paris.

He has been strongly involved in international relations, has spent eight years in China, first as science counsellor in the French Embassy, and then in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he headed the Sino-European IT Lab, LIAMA.