The European Research Council awarded three INRIA researchers in the "Advanced Grant" category in the domains of physical sciences and engineering: Serge Abiteboul and Olivier Faugeras, research directors at INRIA, and Rémi Abgrall, professor at the University of Bordeaux I, seconded to INRIA.

The new member of the ERCIM Board of Directors for CNR is Professor Francesco Beltrame, Director of the Department for Information and Communications Technologies of the Italian National Research Council. ..

On 20 October in London, the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences give the Microsoft 2008 Award to Nicholas Ayache, a research director at INRIA. The honour rewards the outstanding work by this researcher, a pioneer in computational medical image analysis.

To stimulate commercial applications and to disseminate scientific research, CWI founded MonetDB B.V. This independent company will market software products to enhance societal and economic impact of research results.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, unveiled on 14 September 2008 the World Wide Web Foundation, to fulfill a vision of the Web as humanity connected by technology.

European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik has welcomed the results of a recent evaluation of the 34 European Technology Platforms (ETPs). At a meeting of industrial leaders of European Technology Platforms on 30 September, Commissioner Potočnik praised the ETPs, calling them 'unique and exceptional', and welcomed the results of the survey as overwhelmingly positive.