Idiap Research Institute - History

History

The Idiap Research Institute, located in Martigny (Switzerland) and initially referred to as “Institut Dalle Molle d’Intelligence Artificielle Perceptive” (Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence), was founded in 1991 by the Dalle Molle Foundation for the Quality of Life, the Municipality of Martigny, the Canton of Valais, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Geneva and Swisscom as the third of three independent non-profit research institutes in Switzerland:

Legally, its status as a foundation guarantees it great autonomy and gives it access to public scientific research financing while positioning it as a neutral and credible intermediary between the academic world and industry.

As its inception the Idiap Research Institute consisted of about 10 people active mainly in the field of speech recognition. A first phase of development in 1996 saw the planned withdrawal of the Dalle Molle Foundation and the arrival of the current director, Hervé Bourlard, employed at the time by an institute in Berkeley, California. After having celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2001 with the granting of the National Centre of Competence in Research for Interactive Multimodal Information Management (IM)2, the years 2002 to 2004 were marked by very strong growth exemplified by the construction of a second building. A period of consolidation, in terms of personnel, infrastructure, and financing, has followed. Fifteen years after its beginnings, the Idiap Research Institute had approximately 100 employees, 85 of whom are researchers representing 23 nationalities, and among them several from the far corners of the world.