Laboratory presentation

Director: Mohamed Kaâniche
Deputy directors: Daniela Dragomirescu, Pierre Lopez, Pierre Temple-Boyer
Secretary: Marie-Hélène Portet

The Laboratory of Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS) is a CNRS research unit linked with the Institute for Engineering and Systems Sciences (INSIS) and the Institute of Information Sciences and their interactions (INS2I).

Located in Toulouse, LAAS is associated with the 6 founding members of the University of Toulouse:

Scientific research

LAAS’ research activities fall within the domain of Information Sciences and Technologies and address complex systems (artificial and sometimes natural) generally heterogeneous, and at different scales, to devise theories, methodologies and tools for modeling, designing and controlling them.

Research, innovation and transfer are tied. The lab has a history of strong relationships with industry and works in a large number of collaborative projects with international, national and regional industries of all size. LAAS was one of the 20 first “Carnot Institutes” labeled in 2006.

The systems considered in our research are of different kinds: integrated systems, embedded systems with real time and safety requirements, distributed systems, mobile systems, autonomous and robotics systems, micro and nano systems, biological systems. They fall in various application domains such as aeronautics and space, telecommunications, transports, production, services, security and defense, energy management, healthcare, environment and sustainable development.

Scientific research is distributed into six main departments:

  • Networks, IT, Confidence systems
  • Robotics
  • Decision and Optimization
  • MicroWaves: from EM to Systems
  • Energy Management
  • MicroNanoBio Technologies

In addition, in our laboratory project, 5 transverse application axes were defined across domains and groups:

Organization and scientific policy

The basic scientific organizational unit at LAAS is the “Research Team” which is defined by a set of  scientific subjects and objectives and composed by researchers pursuing them (CNRS and university  professors, post-docs and PhDs) .

A team has its own resources and external projects (and contributes to the common lab budget), a director and a scientific committee that meets every month. The size of a team is variable, and its lifetime is 4 years, renewable according to evaluation. In order to address new directions that may stem from existing groups, to launch new activities that differentiate from ongoing ones, or to encourage researchers with novel perspectives, an entity called “Operation” can be created for a period of 2 years, which may become a full group after evaluation.

Currently there are 25 research teams. A team’s scientific objectives fall in one of the height topics mentioned above, even if there are collaborations between different teams across different domains. Actually this is encouraged through “LAAS Projects”, a periodic call for proposals on open subjects, financed internally after evaluation and selection by a project committee.
Within each topics, there are coordination and consultation structures for sharing research orientations, equipments and defining priorities.  

Technical support is provided by a number of engineers and technicians. This personnel is organized in three common technical services

  • IDEA: Information Technology: Development, operation, support
  • I2C: Instrumentation design Characterization
  • TEAM: Techniques And Equipment for Microelectronics

Administrative clerks are organized into 7 common administrative and support services.