Awards

2018: Inria Prize of the National Science Academy (computer science researcher under 40).

2016: Lifetime Achievement Award, awarded by the Evolutionary Linguistics Association.

2014: The Flowers team was Global Fab Award Finalist (for Poppy Project), conférence internationale Fab 10

2012: Together with Clément Moulin-Frier, Best paper award, category “Computational models of cognitive development”, IEEE ICDL-Epirob International Conference, for our article “Curiosity-driven phonetic learning“.

2009: ERC Starting Grant EXPLORERS, awarded by the European Research Council.

2009: Together with Thomas Schatz (student author), Best Student Paper award, IEEE International Conference on Developmental and Learning 2009, Shangaï, China (prize sponsored by the Cognitive Science Society).

2005: Together with Frédéric Kaplan, I was awarded the Implemented Invention Award (4th prize) by Sony Corporation, for our US patent No. 6760645 “Taming robots with clicker training“.

2005: I was awarded the “Prix ASTI 2005“, which is for the best pluri-disciplinary PhD thesis in the Science and Technologies of Information and Communication defended in France in the period 2003/2004. 
communiqué du jury

2004: I was awarded the “Prix Le Monde de la recherche universitaire“, which is a prize organized by the journal “Le Monde” with a jury of scientists, which elect every year the 15 best PhD thesis among those which were defended in the past year in french universities and in a field of exact sciences.

2001: I received the ” Best Application Paper” award in 2001 in the Artificial Evolution Conference, see web site.

2000: I received the “Best Paper Award” with Frederic Kaplan at the Sony Research Forum 2000, which is the yearly worldwide conference that gathers the engineers of Sony Corporation.