Mickaël Coustaty La Rochelle Université > Research and Innovation > Research at the University > Researcher Portraits > Mickaël Coustaty Published on 23 September 2021 Mickaël Coustaty is a PhD in Computer Science and Applications and a lecturer at the Laboratory L3i (Computer Image Interaction) of La Rochelle Université since 2015. He is also co-director of the Master in Digital Law course Trusted Third Party and Digital Security since December 2016, and director of the joint laboratory IDEAS in partnership with the company Yooz and supported by the National Research Agency (ANR) and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region. What is your research field? My research activity concerns the digitisation, recognition and analysis of documents. Behind this wording lies all the technologies and techniques that we all use every day to take photos with our smartphones or cameras, and to detect and recognise the text, logos or writing in these documents. The results of the work in which I am involved make it possible, for example, to search for information in the old European press (in French or in other languages), to sort and extract information from administrative documents and finally to secure these documents by detecting any fraud that they might contain. How is it a real recognition to be a winner of the Young Investigator Award ? The International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) presents awards every two years to recognise individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of document analysis and recognition. In particular, the IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award, which I was awarded in 2021, is intended to support a young investigator who is involved in research, student mentoring, interaction with industry and service to the community. This prize is a recognition of the work I have accomplished on the one hand, and above all it highlights the work of the whole team to which I belong at L3i. It is this collective strength that allows us to be visible internationally, to attract very good students and to establish relationships with industrial and academic partners in France and abroad. And I am proud to be the first Frenchman to receive it! What are the concrete contributions of your research and what do you foresee for the future ? In concrete terms, the results of the work I am involved in (research is done as a team) are valued in several ways. For everything related to heritage documents, several platforms are currently usable by the general public on the platforms of European national libraries. For everything related to administrative documents, our results are regularly integrated by partner companies and I hope to continue this “public-private” collaboration for a long time.
