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Carlos Moreno: One Man, Many Worlds
Carlos Moreno was born in Colombia in 1959 and moved to France at the age of 20. He is a Senior University Professor, an international expert of the Human Smart City, and a Knight of the French Legion of Honour.
The scientist and humanist describes his exceptional career as a path guided through and through by passion: a passion not only for innovation, creativity and exploration but also one for sharing, connecting, and building ties with others. A journey on which he has explored a variety of disciplines and fields in a wide range of spheres – teaching, research, business and industry – strong in his conviction that innovation springs from interaction among them.
Teaching, Research and Scientific Experimentation:
Carlos Moreno swiftly joined France’s scientific community in 1979. In 1983 he became a researcher and lecturer at the IUT in Cachan at the Université de Paris Sud, working in the computer science and robotics laboratory (LIMRO). There, he was a leading figure in robotics, a budding discipline at the time which draws on IT, electronics and mathematics and studies the interface between robots and their environment.
Carlos Moreno’s work in robotics and artificial intelligence made him absolutely certain of two things: one, that systems must be designed in terms of complexity (as defined by French thinkers such as Henri Laborit and Edgar Morin), meaning that an entity can only be understood in relation to its environment and must be studied in the context of how it relates to and depends upon other factors; and two, that this ‘complexity’ can be applied in the real world to create value through innovative services and uses. Also during this period, Carlos Moreno helped create one of France’s first technology transfer offices in the Paris region, at the CERMA in Cachan.
In 1990, after taking part in its creation, Carlos Moreno began working at the Université d’Evry, where he became a Senior Professor. While working at the computer sciences lab (LaMI – Laboratoire des Méthodes Informatiques), a joint unit run by the CNRS, he founded and directed the “Distributed Reactive and Adaptive Systems” team and developed extensive ties with industry.
In the late 1990s, the creation of Genopole, a biotechnology cluster in Evry, gave scientists, research engineers and entrepreneurs at the university an opportunity to work together despite their different backgrounds and specialisations — an approach that Carlos Moreno has tirelessly promoted since.
Exploring a system from the viewpoint of complexity means understanding it in context and studying its vitality as manifested in the relationship among its component parts, the energy which creates these, and the changes made in order to establish an equilibrium, extract knowledge, introduce change, make a breakthrough, anticipate a death or predict the emergence of new situations.
Carlos’ Adventures in Business:
In 1998, a new law on innovation and research in France (the ‘Allegre Law’) enabled researchers to start their own business. Carlos Moreno quickly seized this opportunity to rally his best PhD students, capitalise on the critical mass of knowledge they had generated, and find industrial applications for the expertise acquired through intelligent complex systems. His start-up, Sinovia, was created in 1998. Based at the laboratory, Sinovia centred upon the intelligent control of complex systems with an emphasis on infrastructure. Aided by government funding, Sinovia signed its first partnerships with industrial firms. Every project developed by Carlos Moreno during this period has since proven pertinent (see below) and revealed his visionary spirit.
A pioneer in his field, in 2006 he turned his attention to cities – a complex system par excellence – and developed the concept of the ‘sustainable digital city’ as a viable platform from which to provide the services needed to ensure the well-being of a city’s inhabitants. In this context, Carlos Moreno’s start-up began working with INEO, a subsidiary of GDF SUEZ, which acquired Sinovia in 2010.
Carlos Moreno became Scientific Adviser to the Chief Executive Officer in charge of strategy for GDF SUEZ’s Smart Cities programme. For five years, he led international efforts to develop the city of the future and created the Live in a Living City forum which brings together experts from around the world to look at how urban environments are changing.
Since November 2015, Carlos Moreno has been coaching promising innovators, policy makers and entrepreneurs through his consulting firm InTI in order to transmit and grow his assets.
Throughout his career, Carlos Moreno has strived to build connections between worlds most often devoid of them. His extensive work to build bridges between public entities, major firms and SMEs in the high-tech sector is driven by a firm belief in the importance of working together and a desire to cultivate collective intelligence.
He also plays an active role in public and private initiatives in the areas of innovation and research partnerships. As a scientific expert he has taken part in several government committees, in working groups and public service missions. He frequently appears in the media to discuss science, technology and related applications for the general public, and provides project support to value-creating start-ups and other innovative entrepreneurs.
Equal to his passion for creating value through business is Carlos Moreno’s commitment to France, a country that has welcomed him warmly and to which he remains a faithful servant. While he no longer teachers in an official capacity, he continues to pass on his knowledge and is closely involved in several public service missions. He was named Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in April 2010. The 2019 Prospective Medal of the Academy of Architecture was awarded to Carlos Moreno in Paris on June 11, 2019. He is also a winner of the Obel Award 2021, for his work on urban and territorial proximity and its impact in the world. In November 2021, Carlos Moreno won the Leadership Award at the World Smart Cities Awards, organised by the Smart City Expo World Congress.
Carlos Moreno has contributed significant efforts to developing ties between France and Latin American countries, including relations between major firms with export activities in the region. He has also developed business opportunities and promoted reciprocal technology transfer.
He was also made an ambassador of the Jacques Rougerie Foundation, which works for architectural innovation and artistic creation related to the world of the Sea and Space. In 2023, he joined the American Academy of Housing and Communities in recognition of his “great achievements in urban knowledge, wisdom and practice”. He was appointed to the jury of the Jože Plečnik 2023 international award, which recognises quality of life, human scale and harmony with the environment.
The outstanding career of Carlos Moreno is marked by an interest in people – a focus on others through which we can look beyond ourselves to build a new world together.
Among Carlos Moreno’s contributions in the field of technology:
Among Carlos Moreno’s public endeavours in service of the community:
