A graduate of the École Polytechnique and an ingénieur général des Ponts et Chaussées, Bruno Sportisse also holds a PhD in applied mathematics and an Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches (HDR) in geophysics. Following a PhD on high-dimensional dynamical systems and an early career in the space sector, in 1999 he set up a joint R&D laboratory between EDF and the École des Ponts, focusing on atmospheric environment simulation.

In 2003, he set up the CLIME project team at Inria, dedicated to data assimilation. As the institute’s Director of Technology Transfer and Innovation between 2008 and 2012, he served as the first director of the Inria Carnot Institute. In 2012, he became Digital and Innovation Adviser to the Minister for Higher Education and Research, Geneviève Fioraso, and then, in 2013, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Minister of State for the Digital Economy, SMEs and Innovation, Fleur Pellerin, at the time of the launch of French Tech. In 2014, Bruno Sportisse became Deputy Chief Executive of Thuasne, a medium-sized medical device company, where he spearheaded its digital transformation. In 2016, he took the plunge into entrepreneurship by co-founding Skopai, a start-up combining artificial intelligence and natural language processing. He became CEO of Inria in June 2018.

He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the European Innovation Council (EIC), which supports the scaling up of technology start-ups across Europe.