Chairman and CEO of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French Space Agency. Previously, he was advisor to the Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe, and chief of staff to Frédérique Vidal, the Minister for Higher Education, Research and Innovation. A scientist from the digital sphere, Philippe Baptiste is a specialist in algorithms, combinatorial optimization, operational research and artificial intelligence. He has helped to found and develop several start-ups and pursued numerous collaborations with digital, aviation and defence manufacturers. He was a Partner and Director with Boston Consulting Group and Chief Technology Officer of Total. Before that, he was a researcher at the French national scientific research centre CNRS and IBM’s Watson Research Center, and a lecturer at Ecole Polytechnique. He headed its information technology laboratory and created the Institute of Information Sciences and Interactions before being appointed Associate Director General of CNRS. He also previously sat on the board of INRIA, the French national institute for research in computer science and control. He holds a PhD from the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC) and is a graduate in civil engineering from the Ecole des Mines engineering school in Nancy. He also holds an MSc from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, and a DEA postgraduate diploma from Sorbonne University.
For a reasonably open world
