The Chair
Frequently asked questions
The AIARD Chair in twelve short answers.
What is the AIARD Chair?
AIARD (Artificial Intelligence Assisted R&D) is an industrial research chair of INSA Strasbourg, run by the CSIP team of the ICube laboratory (UMR 7357). It studies how artificial intelligence can help invent, building on inventive design derived from TRIZ. It was launched on 26 November 2020.
Is AIARD a company?
No. AIARD is neither a company nor a legally independent institute: it is a research chair hosted by INSA Strasbourg. Expertise assignments are contracted separately through SATT Conectus.
Who runs the Chair?
Denis Cavallucci, professor at INSA Strasbourg, founder and coordinator of the Chair, provides its political and scientific leadership. Silan Sevik, project officer, administers it: administration, accounting, human resources and communication.
What does the Chair research?
One question: can a machine help invent, and can we prove it? The Chair brings together inventive design (TRIZ, contradictions, problem graphs) and computer science (language models, information retrieval, text embedding models). Its six themes range from patent and literature intelligence to tech scouting in energy.
Since when has INSA Strasbourg worked on TRIZ and AI?
Inventive design has been developed at INSA Strasbourg since 1995, and work combining TRIZ and artificial intelligence began in 2009. Since 2020 the team has co-edited the Springer proceedings of the field’s world conference, which became the World Conference of AI-Powered Innovation and Inventive Design in 2024.
What software has the Chair developed?
Seven flagship tools: Finder, TRIZBench, ARIZ-Copilot, FusionMind, PatentSpark, HiveScan and TRIZApp; the first six come from PhD theses in the team. Industrial members access them through IDEAS accounts and see new releases in live demonstrations.
What are PatenTEB and patembed?
PatenTEB is a benchmark of fifteen tasks for evaluating patent text embedding models (Ayaou and Cavallucci, arXiv 2510.22264, 2025). patembed is the accompanying family of twelve open models, published on Hugging Face and downloaded more than 23,000 times.
What is DAPFAM?
DAPFAM is a dataset for patent retrieval across technical domains, aggregated at the level of patent families (Ayaou, Cavallucci and Chibane, Array journal, 2026). Its tasks are part of MTEB, the reference benchmark for embedding models.
How much does the Chair publish?
69 unique references since 2020 on the Google Scholar profile of Denis Cavallucci, Chair holder, most of them now in artificial intelligence. Six PhD theses have been defended in the team since 2021.
How can a company become a partner?
Through annual patronage paid to the Fondation Université de Strasbourg. Competitors already in the Chair are consulted beforehand and may object, and the commitment is flexible: members can join or leave each year. In return, all staff receive IDEAS accounts, the company attends live demonstrations and its problems are studied by researchers and students.
Who funds the Chair?
Mostly industry, through patronage; ArcelorMittal and Forvia have been members from the start. The Chair is also supported by the Région Grand Est and the Eurométropole de Strasbourg, and its funds are collected through the Fondation Université de Strasbourg.
How can I study or do a PhD with the Chair?
PhD, postdoctoral and engineering internship positions open as funding allows, and unsolicited applications are welcome. Every year since 2015, the Inventive Design Contest has given INSA Strasbourg students a real problem from a company. To write to us: contact@aiard.eu.