Stéphane VERA

After graduating in 1998 with an engineering degree from ESIM (now Centrale Marseille), I turned my professional career towards the industrial world and its challenges. I first joined GFI (now Inetum), where I worked on software development in the telecoms sector. Then, in 2000, I joined Gemplus (now Gemalto and Thales DIS), where I progressively took on responsibilities as technical leader, project manager and unit manager. For 8 years, I had the pleasure and privilege of creating and deploying products with strong operational constraints with formidable teams at major telecoms players in some fifty countries, including Verizon (US), Orange world (UK &FR), O2 (DE), Vodafone (DE), NTT Docomo (JP), Optimus (PT), HOI (SA), etc.
On the strength of this experience of working closely with customers, their issues and pre-sales, I took over responsibility for the GCOTA product (Over The Air platform administering over 1 billion SIM cards) within Gemalto R&D.
Alongside this professional activity since 1999, I have always wanted to share my knowledge of the "field" and learn from students. I first taught as a PAST at the IUT Génie Telecom et Réseaux de Luminy, then as a part-time lecturer at EMSE (Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne), Centrale Marseille and ISEN (now Yncréa Méditerranée).
It was through contact with these engineering schools that, in 2010, I decided to take part in a new adventure with new challenges. So I joined ISEN as Director of Research and Development. Since then, my missions have been to participate in the COMEX of Yncréa Méditerranée, to manage a team of R&D teacher-researchers made up of committed and remarkable individuals, to define the R&D development strategy and its objectives, to manage the R&D budget, to interface with project funding structures such as the European Commission, the BPI, the DGE, etc., to set up national/international collaborative projects and to sell R&D services. In 2016, I had the immense honor of being entrusted with the Yncréa group's IoT research chair, which I have since managed in addition to my R&D management activity.