With the Académie des Sciences in 2015

FOSTERING INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION

The Creation of the Algerian Academy of Science and Technology

The year 2015 saw the achievement of the project of setting up an academy of science and technology in Algeria. The

Académie des Sciences brought its support to the leaders of the project at all stages of its implementation, including the

drafting of the statutes of the future academy and the empanelling of the international jury in charge of selecting the scientists

called to be the founding nucleus of the future academy.

Following the publication on 10 March 2015 of the Presidential Decree establishing the Algerian Academy, a jury composed

of members from several academies throughout the world, chaired by Catherine Bréchignac, Secrétaire perpétuel of the

Académie and delegate ambassador for science, technology and innovation, convened from 5 to 7 June 2015 in Algiers.

Its work resulted in the selection of the first 46 members (six of which were from the diaspora) of the Algerian Academy of

Science and Technology, officially established on 14 November 2015 in Algiers under the auspices of the Algerian Minister of

Higher Education and Research.

International Scientific Prizes

Descartes-Huygens Prize

Created in 1995 at the Hague by the French

and Dutch governments, this prize is alternately

allocated in the fields of science of matter, life

sciences and human and social science. Awarded

under the auspices of the French Académie des

Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy

of Arts and Sciences, it rewards every year two

researchers of international level, one being French

and the other Dutch, both actively contributing to bilateral scientific cooperation. Amounting to €46,000 (€23,000 for each party), this

prize is especially intended to fund the laureate’s stay as an invited researcher in the other country.

2015 Laureates (life sciences): Benoît Viollet, codirector of the “Energy and Iron Sensing in Physiopathology” team, Institut Cochin,

Paris, and Joost Gribnau, director of the Department of developmental biology, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam.

Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize

Two prizes of €60,000 each are awarded every year to

internationally renowned scientists working in Germany,

whose applications are submitted by the French partners

with whom they develop or plan to develop cooperation.

The Académie des Sciences assists the Ministry of

Higher Education and Research by empanelling the jury.

Conversely, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

awards the Gay-Lussac Humboldt Prize to scientists

working in France and intending to carry out long-term

research projects in cooperation with their colleagues in

Germany.

2015 German laureates: Markus Antonietti, director of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, and Stephan

Schlemmer, head of the Laboratory Astrophysics Group of the University of Cologne.