Engineer General of Ponts, Eaux et Forêts, member of the Académie des Technologies and the Académie d'Agriculture de France, François Houllier has been Chairman and CEO of Ifremer (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea) since September 2018.
He holds a doctorate from the Université Claude Bernard (Lyon I), is a graduate of the École Polytechnique and the École nationale du Génie rural, des Eaux et Forêts (Engref, now AgroParisTech), and has conducted research into forest inventories and the modelling of forests and plants. He was director of the French Institute in Pondicherry, India (1994-97) and of the "Botany and bioinformatics of plant architecture" joint research unit (Montpellier, 1998-2002).
From July 2012 to July 2016, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA), having previously held various positions there. From September 2016 to September 2018, he was provisional administrator and then president of the Sorbonne Paris Cité University (USPC), where he led the "University of Paris" excellence initiative project, selected in March 2018.
In 2016, it submitted a report on the state of participatory science in France, which led to a national charter in 2017. In 2015 and 2016, it also submitted two reports to the French government on research and innovation up to 2025 in agriculture and in the forestry and wood industry.