Digital Communication and Information Sciences for the Future Internet

CominLabs is a Labex involving nine partner labs distributed over Brittany-Nantes, gathering about 500 researchers. Its scientific scope involves networks, security and privacy, connected things, data and artificial intelligence, robotics, the social Web, ICT for precision medicine, multimedia, ICT & social sciences, AI for education. To sustain this distributed nature and wide scientific scope, CominLabs functions by supporting specific actions aligned with its strategic program for research, education, and innovation. Thus, CominLabs runs a program of highly ambitious multi-lab and multi-disciplinary projects. About fourty research and education projects, including the CominWeb platform, have been launched since 2012 as the result of eight successive project calls in the period 2012-2017. In close interaction with its International Advisory Committee (IAC), CominLabs seeds, selects, monitors and manages its projects, way beyond what a traditional funding program does. This offers a novel and unparalleled service to its research and education community, making CominLabs an exploratory structure for how to manage networked research. Nine issues of CominLabs Days have been held between 2013 and 2025 (with about 200 attendees, including our international IAC experts, for each edition). CominLabs maintains a well-documented web site. Relations have been established with SATT Ouest-Valorisation, IRT b<>com, several companies and SME. Almost 20 innovation actions have also been undertaken, embracing patents, startup launching, clinical trials, short-term projects with SME, and international extension of projects.

CominLabs was extended for five years in 2020 and received additional funding in July 2024 which motivated the request for an extension until end of 2027. This extension has been grated and a new collection of CominLabs projects hae been launched in 2025.