It was in 1987 that Christine Morin took her first steps at Inria as a DEA intern. Forty years later, she talks with us about her career as a researcher, whose internationally renowned work has had a major impact on the digital revolution we are experiencing today.
Beyond her research activities, Christine Morin has also been deeply committed to our institute over the past several years. After passing the torch, she is now ready to embark on a new chapter in her life, free from files, deadlines, and other professional obligations. We wish her many wonderful and fulfilling years ahead!
Interview conducted by Edith Blin for the Inria Center at the University of Rennes
Christine, when did you join Inria?
While studying at INSA Rennes and simultaneously pursuing a DEA in computer science at the University of Rennes 1, I joined IRISA/Inria in February 1987. I completed my DEA internship there, which also served as my final internship to earn my degree in computer engineering.
I was welcomed into the LSP (Parallel Languages and Systems) project team under the direction of Jean-Pierre Banâtre, who at the time was the team leader and in charge of international exchanges in the computer science department at INSA.
I admit that it was somewhat by chance that I ended up doing my internship at IRISA, since my initial plan was to do it in Germany, but things didn’t fall into place in time to make that happen. Plan B—joining the LSP team, whose research topics were fully aligned with my interests—was then put into action. I then went on to complete my dissertation in the same team, followed by a year as an assistant professor, before securing a position as a research fellow at Inria in 1991.
What were your responsibilities?
I started out as a researcher on the LSP, SOLIDOR, CAPS, and then PARIS project teams. In 2010, I spearheaded the creation of the MYRIADS team, which I left in late 2017 when I became Director of European and International Partnerships (DPEI) at Inria. In the summer of 2019, I decided to leave that position (and the Paris region) for personal reasons. I was then asked to become the Scientific Delegate of the Inria center in Rennes, a position I held for six years until last summer. In September 2023, I was appointed Vice Chair of Inria’s Evaluation Committee (CE). I stepped down from the CE at the end of January as part of my retirement.
What is your earliest memory—your first impression?
I knew absolutely nothing about the academic world before starting my DEA. I was struck by the youth and energy of the researchers and faculty members, the diversity of their backgrounds, and the strong personalities of my colleagues at IRISA/Inria, as well as the relaxed work atmosphere.
The place that made the biggest impression on me when I joined the Inria research unit in Rennes (as it was called at the time) was its iconic cafeteria. It was (and still is) a very welcoming place where the center’s staff would run into each other several times a day, but back then it was also a very smoky place. The IRISA/Inria library was also a gathering place because, back then, we read articles on paper and had to stop by regularly to check out newly arrived journals and conference proceedings and to order research reports from foreign universities. The photocopiers were huge, and we spent a lot of time making copies of articles.
What were the highlights or significant events during those years?
Throughout my career as a researcher, there have been several highlights. Of course, coordinating the two successive major European projects, XtreemOS and Contrail, which kept me busy from 2005 to 2014, was a major highlight.
Among the most significant research projects of my career, I would cite the design and development of the Kerrighed single-image operating system. I am proud of this work, which I carried out in collaboration with my Ph.D. students, postdocs, and engineers. It was pioneering in the late 1990s and early 2000s and led to the most advanced open-source system in terms of simulating a PC running a Linux system on a cluster of interconnected computers. New virtualization technologies subsequently changed the landscape somewhat. This work received support from EDF and the DGA. It resonated within the open-source community and in the field of computing clusters for HPC, and enabled me to establish long-term international collaborations, notably in the United States with the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It also led to the creation of the startup Kerlabs, led by three of my former Ph.D. students.
One particularly memorable period was undoubtedly the two years I spent at Berkeley from 2011 to 2013 as a visiting researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and scientific director of the Inria@Silicon Valley program. At the time, Inria@Silicon Valley had just been launched and aimed to develop collaborations with California universities. I learned a great deal during that time, as I was immersed in the vibrant atmosphere of Silicon Valley, which gave me the opportunity to interact with many scientists working in academia and industry in California and France. Once I returned to France, I continued my work as part of a team affiliated with the one that had hosted me at LBNL and with the international chair held by Deb Agarwal, its director.
I also greatly enjoyed the six years I spent serving as scientific delegate for the Inria center at the University of Rennes. It was a very enriching period spent working alongside researchers from the teams, members of the center’s administrative staff, and key players in the ecosystem. I have fond memories of that time.
What are some of your most memorable experiences from those years?
The COVID period, of course, remains a defining memory. I had been the scientific delegate for less than a year and had no experience with crisis management when the center closed its doors. We had to adapt quickly to this anxiety-inducing situation, which profoundly changed our practices.
On a more anecdotal note, I remember organizing the ACM EuroSys 2010 conference as General Chair at the CNAM in Paris, a venue that the conference steering committee had chosen over Saint-Malo for reasons of accessibility. The end of the conference was marked by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which brought air traffic to a standstill. The word “volcano” was on everyone’s lips when I joined the participants for dinner on the final evening. Since I hadn’t had time to read the latest news during the conference, I didn’t immediately understand why that term had suddenly become such a hot topic. This unexpected turn of events resulted, unusually, in a very large audience for the conference’s final morning, as the vast majority of participants were stranded in Paris due to the suspension of air travel or a train strike… troubles always seem to come in droves. Many participants took advantage of the extra few days to visit Paris… As for me, after the conference, I spent spring break alone with my children, since my husband had been stranded—for the same reasons—for a week in the United States, where he was on a business trip.
What was your biggest challenge?
Setting up the XtreemOS European project in 2005 and then leading it for four years—a project led by a consortium of 19 academic and industrial partners across eight countries in Europe and China.
The goal of this project was to design and implement a distributed operating system for a computer grid to make life easier for administrators, programmers, and users of such computing infrastructures. In a way, it involved scaling up from Kerrighed—which was designed for a single computer cluster—to a network of clusters spread across different geographic locations.
It was a wonderful collective adventure, not only scientifically but also on a human level. This major project transformed my daily life as a researcher, and I appreciated the management aspect of the research it entailed.
This project on computing grids was launched in 2006, just as the cloud was emerging. I remember a meeting six months after the project began, during which we debated whether the cloud was just a trendy “buzzword” or a fundamental transformation of computing infrastructure and the way we access computing resources. We concluded that we couldn’t ignore the cloud. Even though we were contractually committed to designing a system for grids, it was at that time that I began working on the cloud, as did the project partners. Before the XtreemOS project ended, we submitted a new European project, Contrail, with various partners—several of whom were from the XtreemOS consortium—to work on the secure management of virtual organizations within the context of cloud federations. I led this project, which began in 2010.
What was the last thing you did before leaving—and/or—what didn’t you have time to do?
During the final year of my term as scientific delegate in 2025, I had the pleasure of helping to establish several brand-new project teams created from scratch at the Inria center at the University of Rennes: the AIMOKA project team (created in November 2025), a joint effort with the AP-HP and the Sorbonne Paris Nord University within the Bernoulli Lab, which aims to develop innovative numerical models for percutaneous ablation of cancerous tumors; and the SIRA project team (created in January 2026) in the social sciences, focusing on responsible AI within the Fabrique de Pensée Critique (LFPC) laboratory at INSA Rennes.
In early 2026, I briefed my successor as vice president of the Executive Committee on several ongoing projects, particularly on the implementation—from the Executive Committee’s perspective—of the various stages of the evaluation process for the institute’s project teams. Finally, my very last tasks were to clear out the office I had been using and to prepare for my retirement party.
What will you miss the most?
I’ll miss my colleagues. Research is a wonderful team effort.
What was your favorite item at the office?
A pencil and eraser, and then my tablet.
How would you sum up your career in one to three words?
Fulfilling, varied, and busy!
If you hadn’t pursued this career, what would you have liked to do?
I would have liked to study sociology, but back when I was in high school, it was hard for me to imagine what careers those studies might have led to. At a time when unemployment was high, the priority was to choose a field with good job prospects. A career as a computer engineer was seen back then as a promising path…
For you, retirement means:
Freedom, spending time with family and friends, sports, hiking, traveling, and reading.
But I will stay in touch through Inria+alumni ;-)
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
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