On June 30, 2026, the academic and industrial partners behind the GIS ALBATROS (‘Alliance Between universities in Aquitaine and Thales in Research on aviOnics Systems’ Scientific Interest Group) gathered to officially sign the amendment extending the collaboration for another 4 years.
The event was attended by Pierre Blondy, Vice President for Knowledge Transfer and Innovation at the University of Limoges; Denis Bonnet, Vice President for Research, Technology and Avionics Innovation at Thales AVS; Franck Cazaurang, Academic Lead of the GIS ALBATROS at the IMS Laboratory; Guillaume Ferré, CEO of Bordeaux INP; Marc Gatti, Industrial Co-Director of the GIS ALBATROS at Thales; Dean Lewis, President of the University of Bordeaux; Franck Molina, Deputy Scientific Director for “Innovation and Platforms” at CNRS Engineering; Philippe Priouzeau, Technical Director for Flight Avionics Activities at Thales LAS; Benoît Souyri, Software Key Technological Domain Director at Thales DMS; and Thierry Urruty, Associate Professor and Representative of the Vice President for Research at the University of Poitiers.
The GIS ALBATROS consortium was established in 2010 to foster scientific innovation in the aeronautics sector through long-term collaborations between Thales and academic partners in the Aquitaine region. Its objectives are to:
- Develop shared research themes;
- Pool human and technical resources to advance identified research areas;
- Implement joint consulting and training activities;
- Establish technological demonstration platforms based on the results of collaborative research projects.
More specifically, its scientific program is structured around five main research areas: (1) remotely operated and autonomous systems for avionics and mission systems, (2) human–system interaction and augmented reality, (3) signal and image processing, (4) electronic architectures, and (5) aeronautical manufacturing and maintenance. More recently, two cross-cutting themes have been added to these research priorities: cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
On average, 7 CIFRE doctoral theses (French Industrial Agreements for Training through Research) are launched each year in collaboration between Thales and partner laboratories (115 PhD theses funded since 2010).
The IMS Laboratory has been strongly involved in this long-standing partnership, ever since its creation. Currently, 5 IMS PhD candidates are conducting their research within this cooperative framework.
Within the laboratory, GIS ALBATROS is coordinated by Franck Cazaurang, who serves as the academic lead. The partnership involves research staff from the Cognitics, Automatic Control, Production Engineering, Reliability, Circuit Design, and Signal & Image Processing research groups.
To know more about this ongoing collaboration, check the following page: https://www.ims-bordeaux.fr/collaboration/gis-albatros-thales/
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Institutional partners:
University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux INP, CNRS, University of Poitiers and University of Limoges.
Industrial partners:
Thales DMS France, Thales AVS France and Thales LAS France.
Laboratories involved:
Laboratory for the Integration from Material to System (IMS), Institute of Mathematics of Bordeaux (IMB), Bordeaux Computer Science Research Laboratory (LaBRI) and XLIM Institute of Research.
Support organizations:
SATT Aquitaine Science Transfert, ADERA.
