Karl Tombre

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CURRICULUM-VITAE

Karl Tombre

Retired professor (in computer science) at Université de Lorraine

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• Born in 1961 in Trondheim (Norway)
• French nationality since 1980 (previously Norwegian)
• Married, 15 children

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Degrees

1983	DEA d'Informatique - Master's degree in computer science
1987	Doctorat en Informatique de l'INPL (Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine) - PhD in computer science
1996	Habilitation à diriger des recherches, université Henri Poincaré Nancy 1 - Habilitation degree, for access to professor position

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Positions held

NB: From 2007 to 2024, I held positions involving a full-time duty in conducting affairs at a large scale and/or managing academic activities. This left me little time for "basic" academic activities activities.

See below for detail of my activities in Research, education, evaluation, and various other responsibilities

• Since January 2025
  

  I have retired and have no longer any academic responsibilities or duties, except continuing to report to Université de Lorraine as a member of CESER Grand Est, the Grand Est Region's Economic, Social and Environmental Council, nominated by the university, until the end of the present term.

• June 2017-December 2024
  

  Vice-president for European and International Strategy of Université de Lorraine
  

  Executive Officer of Lorraine Université d'Excellence

• September 2012-June 2017
  

  Vice-president for partnerships and international affairs of Université de Lorraine (merger on Jan. 1, 2012 of four universities including my former university Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine).
  

  In charge of coordinating the LUE excellence initiative bid for Université de Lorraine and its partners, and since February 2016,  the bid having been selected, appointed executive officer of Lorraine Université d'Excellence

• September 2007- August 2012

  On temporary leave from my professor position and on secondment to Inria as director of the Inria Nancy - Grand Est research center. Also appointed the director of LORIA until December 31, 2009.

• February-August 2007

  While still being formally on a position of professor in computer science at École des Mines de Nancy (Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine), appointed the director of LORIA and of Inria Nancy - Grand Est research center. 

• September 1998-January 2007

  Professor in computer science at École des Mines de Nancy (Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine).

  From beginning of 2002, head of the QGAR research group of LORIA for my research activities. 

  From 2002 to January 2007, head of the computer science department at École des Mines de Nancy.

  From 2001 to March 2007, responsible for doctoral studies in computer science at the 3 Universities of Nancy and the University of Metz.

• September 1987-September 1998

  Chargé de recherche (senior researcher) at Inria. From 1992, deputy leader of a research group of LORIA, first MOVI, then ISA.

  Coordinator of several graduate courses in computer vision and document analysis, and different other educational activities in the same area.

  For several years, coordinator of international relations for LORIA.

  Working group on object-oriented languages; book published in 1989, with Italian and English translations.

  Expert for evaluation of ESPRIT programme (1997-98).

• 1984-1987

  Researcher at CRIN/CNRS (Centre de recherche en informatique de Nancy). Worked on an ESPRIT 1 project (HERODE) for which CRIN was subcontractor. Main project partners: TITN (Paris) and Siemens (Munich).

  My contribution to HERODE was in the area of document recognition: finding and coding graphics in composite documents. I wrote and defended (June 1987) a PhD thesis on this matter.

  I contributed also more generally to the research work in image processing and computer vision done in our group. Some educational activities.

• 1983-1984

  Military service during which I taught computer science and wrote some software (Volontaire Formateur en Informatique).

• 1979-1983

  Summer jobs in an engineering office in Norway, mainly writing software for materials resistance and other engineering tasks.

  During studies, several translation contracts (German to French, French to German, English to French, French to English) for a French company -- translation of technical and commercial documents, including a whole book on the bending of pipes.

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Description of professional activities

• Management and governance

• Research

  My main research topic has been in the realm of computer vision and image analysis, more precisely the analysis and recognition of graphics, in technical documents, engineering drawings, maps, etc. In this area, I have supervised 8 PhD theses and several other students. 

  I have also supervised a PhD thesis on medical image analysis.

  From beginning 2002 to september 2007, founder and leader of the QGAR research project on graphics recognition, also at the origin of the QGAR free software package for graphics recognition. Before that, from 1992 to 2001, deputy leader of ISA research group working on computer vision and augmented reality.

  Responsible for a number of research contracts with companies or other institutions.

  From august 2006 to december 2008, I was the president of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). Previously I had been 1st vice-president from 2004 to 2006 and secretary from 2000 to 2004, and from august 1992 to august 1996, I was chairman of Technical Committee 10 (Graphics Recognition) of the IAPR.

  June 2004 to January 2008 : President (before 2004, vice-president) of AFRIF (French association for pattern recognition).

  Co-founder of the series of international workshops on graphics recognition, and co-chair of the two first workshops: GREC'95 (Penn State, Pennsylvania, USA) and GREC'97 (Nancy, France). Program co-chair for ICDAR'99, the 5th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (Bangalore, India), and for ICDAR'01, the 6th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (Seattle, USA). Member of various conference committees.

  Co-founder of International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (Springer Verlag), of which I was editor-in-chief until september 2013. Member of advisory board for ELCVIA (Electronic Letters on Computer Vision and Image Analysis). Member of editorial board of Machine Graphics & Vision.

• Education

  As a professor, I was head of the computer science department at École des Mines de Nancy from September 2002 to February 2007. From 1998 to 2004, I created or reformatted one new course each year, thus conducting the progressive transformation of  the computer science curriculum at École des Mines de Nancy. 

  See section on educational documents in my publication list.

  In 2012, I was the head of Inria's internal management school, in charge of providing courses in management duties to Inria's new research group leaders and heads of various offices and departments.

  Lately, I have not many teaching assignments, and several of them are in the border area between computing and management.

• Evaluation and recruitment

  2019 : member of HCERES evaluation committee for Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées

  2017 : member of HCERES evaluation committee for Da Nang University of Science and Technology and for Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology

  2016 : member of HCERES evaluation committees for ENSTA and Universities of Clermont-Ferrand : Université d'Auvergne and Université Blaise Pascal; chair of HCERES evaluation committee for I3S (Nice Sophia Antipolis)
  

  2015 : member of HCERES evaluation committee for Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

  2013 : member of recruitment committees at Universities Caen and La Rochelle

  2011 : member of senior researcher (CR1 and DR2) recruitment committee at INRA

  2010-2011 : member of evaluation committee for joint curricula at French-German University (UFA/DFH)

  2010 : president of AERES evaluation committee for L3I (La Rochelle), member of AERES committee for LINA and Atlanstic (Nantes). 

  2009-2010 and 2012 : member of committee for "prime d'excellence scientifique" at Ministère de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche

  2007: member of various evaluation committees for French research institutions: LIRIS (Rouen), LISyC & E3I2 (Brest), Ecole des Mines de Douai.

  From september 2004 to september 2007, president of commission de spécialistes 27e section at INPL (recruitment committee for computer science positions at my university, INPL).
  

  From 1999 to 2003, member of CNU (the French National Council of Universities), in the 27th section (Computer Science)

• Miscellaneous

  From October 2014 to December 2016 : vice-president of NB Tech (Nancy Brabois Technopole)

  Since December 2012: member of Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Lorraine, which has become CESER Grand Est after the merger of three regions on January 1st, 2016. See specific section on CESER reports in my publication list.
  

  Member of scientific council of ACI "Masse de données" in 2005, ARA MDCA in 2006

  Back in the 1990s and beginning of 2000s, member of scientific council of doctoral school MSII in Strasbourg and of scientific advisory committee for "Pôle Image", also in Strasbourg.

  For many years (until beginning of 1998), technical responsibilities as super-user and coordinator of equipment and network policy. Until september 1998, maintainer of the (La)TeX Navigator web site.

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Language abilities

Fluent in French, English, German, and Norwegian

Danish and Swedish understood but not spoken; Dutch partially understood but not spoken; Some knowledge of Spanish

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K. Tombre