Speaker — Neptune Forum 2026
François Houllier
CEO of IFREMER, Board co-president of Mission Neptune
Chairman & CEO of IFREMER, co-Chair of the Mission Neptune Board
A graduate of the École Polytechnique with a doctorate in forest biometrics, François Houllier began his career as a project leader in forest resource assessment at the IFN (Inventaire forestier national) before becoming a professor at the ENGREF and then Director of the Institut français de Pondichéry (India) from 1994 to 1997. He subsequently led the joint research unit on Plant Architecture Botany and Computer Science (Botanique et bio-informatique de l'architecture des plantes, Cirad, CNRS, INRA, IRD and Université Montpellier-II) until 2002, and held various management positions at INRAE before becoming its President from 2012 to 2016. In 2017, he chaired the Université Sorbonne-Paris-Cité and became, in September 2018, Chairman and CEO of Ifremer.
