Click here to download the 2024 Activity Report.
The year 2024 was part of a continuing flourishing dynamic for Franco-American scientific cooperation, illustrating a common desire to intensify collaborations and develop strategic initiatives in key areas of research and innovation.
This historic cooperation is based on strong ties and ongoing dialogue between researchers, universities and institutions. It reflects a relationship that, to this day, transcends political cycles and relies on networks of scientists engaged in large-scale projects. Scientific cooperation between France and the United States is long lasting, dense, multifaceted, and based on the fact that French and American researchers easily identify with each other, with fluid exchanges that allow collaborative projects to produce unique discoveries.
In 2024, our goal was to create conditions conducive to the emergence of new collaborations, by providing institutional support where necessary and facilitating synergies between academic and industrial actors on both sides of the Atlantic. Our network of attachés and project managers, covering the entire American territory, provides France with a science diplomacy network – an advantage that few world powers currently boast.
Our activities are structured around four major missions, detailed throughout the pages of this report: developing bilateral cooperation, facilitating talent mobility, supporting French innovation and promoting scientific communities. This structuring framework guides our priorities, our actions and most of our interactions with our American partners.
The France Science Summit, organized for the first time in Washington D.C. in 2023, dedicated to the promotion of French research in the United States, as well as to the highlighting of bilateral scientific cooperation projects, again took place in 2024 – in the presence of the special envoy for science, technology and innovation: Mr. Thierry Damerval. This event was extended to Atlanta and San Francisco, through the respective events “France Atlanta Science Summit” and “Science Beyond Borders” which were great successes. The celebration of Inserm’s 60th anniversary at the French Embassy was also a highlight, marked by the signing of three International Joint Labs, the launch of the Inserm Abroad network and the reopening of the Inserm Office in Washington to strengthen bilateral collaborations in biomedical research.
French research organizations and universities have, as they do every year, played a leading role in the vitality of transatlantic relations: signing of a letter of intent between CNES and Houston Spaceport, which is part of a boom in Franco-American collaborations in the space sector; signing of an agreement between Rice University and PSL University, covering strategic areas such as energy, climate, artificial intelligence and quantum; signing of a new framework agreement between INRAE and USDA-ARS which further strengthens scientific collaborations in plant and animal genetics, carbon sequestration and aquaculture.
2024 was also marked by the support of the service for two missions to the United States of the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices. One on the decarbonization of air transport, the other on generative artificial intelligence which highlighted the dynamics of governance and innovation in the sector, while illustrating the growing involvement of universities and institutions in this technological revolution.
Finally, for the first time, the scientific department supported the launch of two fundraising campaigns, the first around the Ice Memory initiative, and the second for the partnership on agrivoltaics between the CNRS and the University of Arizona, with the mobilization of academic and economic stakeholders around innovative projects linked to climate issues.
If 2023 was the year of acceleration, 2024 will have been the year of diversification and dissemination of our actions to promote the expansion of our impact and the strengthening of Franco-American synergies. With the election of President Donald Trump as President of the United States and the measures taken since his inauguration on January 20, 2025, a new landscape is emerging that risks radically transforming this partnership dynamic.
Wishing you a great read,
Mireille Guyader
Counselor for Science and Technology
