An interview with Mrs Claire GIRY, President and CEO of the French National Research Agency (ANR)
Regional partnerships for targeted research excellence
As the new President and CEO of the ANR, what are your strategic directions for the Agency and what are your priorities?
When I arrived at the ANR, I was able to appreciate the highly professional, highly committed teams that have won the trust of scientists. With 20 years’ experience in evaluating research projects, the ANR has benefited from the LPR (research programming act) to increase its project selection rate to over 25% for all calls for proposals. I intend to build on this success and extend the remit of the Agency, which is recognised for its efficient and effective funding, to include providing data on research projects for analysis and policy-making purposes. This is what the Data Direction is all about. It was set up in 2021, structered and is now in a position to contribute to proposals. In a hyper-competitive international context, I also see three major challenges: France’s attractiveness to young researchers, the coordination of French and European financial instruments, and the repositioning of innovation support schemes, not forgetting the need to continue simplifying project funding procedures and to study the contribution that AI can make. The context is particularly favourable for the ANR: it has just been evaluated by the Hcéres, will be signing a new COP (objectives and performance contract) with the French government this year, and is preparing for the next three-year cycle of its calls for projects and its 20th anniversary!
Could you give us an initial assessment of the generic call for proposals and the specific programmes and calls for proposals for 2024?
We have maintained a success rate of around 25%, 2,000 projects have been funded and our agreements with international partners (Germany, Switzerland, Canada, etc.) have enabled us to continue funding targeted projects. Public-private partnership research benefited greatly from LabComs (joint laboratories) which celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2023 and opened up more to start-ups, CIFRE theses and collaborations with several laboratories. As a result, in 2024 there were 80% more project submissions and 36% more projects funded than in 2023. In addition, 12 PUIs (university innovation clusters) are participating in at least one LabCom. As for the Carnot institutes, their funding has been increased from €60m to €116m between 2020 and 2024. And we are thinking about how to make industrial chairs more attractive.
What are the highlights of the ANR’s 2025 Working Programme?
This is the last year of the three-year plan. Continuity of instruments and preparation of the future plan for the next 3 years are on the agenda. Our scientific priorities are AI, humanities and social sciences (with continued growth in the number of projects submitted, between 15% and 22% more each year), quantum technologies, autism and neurodevelopmental disorders, rare diseases, mathematics and the exploitation of data generated by research infrastructures. In a cross-functional way, we will continue to promote ethics and integrity, the reduction of gender inequalities, open science, sustainable development and dialogue between science and society.
On 10 December 2024, the ANR and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) celebrated the tenth anniversary of their bilateral funding agreement
How are you working with the Hauts-de-France and Île-de-France regions?
Partnerships with local and regional authorities are one of the Agency’s missions. They make it possible to identify expertise needs in line with specific local circumstances, to promote excellence in research, to organise the evaluation of regional calls for projects and to provide the regions with data to help them draw up their research and innovation strategies. This gives the ANR greater visibility and simplifies the way it works. In 2020, the Agency and the Hauts-de-France Region formalised their collaboration in response to covid: they co-funded a specific call for proposals, ‘Résilience Hauts-de-France’, to assess the impact of the virus on health, the economy, society and the environment in this particularly hard-hit region. The results of this research have been used to help political decision-makers decide on an appropriate regional strategy. Fifteen projects, totalling €1.8m, were presented in 2022 and 2023. The situation with Île-de-France is different: although we don’t have a similar agreement with this region, which accounts for almost half of all French research activities, we do have exchanges and fund many projects. As a general rule, it is in the interest of the Regions to use our data in particular to gain an overview of the projects supported in their territory and to develop a research strategy that is as close as possible to this reality. We can provide them with a dedicated space on the data anr platform. And let’s not forget the Agency’s ability to launch targeted calls in response to specific issues such as chlordecone, the proliferation of sargassum seaweed on the coasts of Martinique and Guadeloupe, hurricanes and industrial risks, with the launch of the SIOMRI call for Research-Action proposals with the Normandy and Hauts-de-France regions. A high level of responsiveness to meet the challenges and expectations of our regions!
Originally published in ©Parlementaires de France Magazine, now ©Research Innov France.
