Datlas in short

Our ambition

Datlas was created in October 2021 by 5 co-founders based in Grenoble and Aix-les-Bain, with the ambition to develop Research & Innovation opportunities at the interface between academic/institutionnal research and operational stakeolders (such as the national and european spatial agencies or the european marine & climate services) in the domains of Earth & Environnmental sciences.

In Datlas, we gather a team of experts in numerical methods and numerical models applied to Earth data, ranging from observations to model simulations. Our on-going activities are related to spatial observations, modelling and forecasting of the ocean (ocean height, ocean currents, ocean physical properties such as salinity and temperature) and of sea ice:

• We are involved in activities to design future observationnal missions, which builds on high-quality and hight-resolution simulations of the ocean, in order to anticipate the future observation data and to develop innovative numerical methods and models to get ready to process and exploit these future data when they arrive.
• We are also involved in activities to develop and improve numerical models of the ocean and sea ice in order to better understand existing observations and the physical processes at play, and to better forecast the physical properties that matters for operational stakeolders and end users.

Building on the various science backgrounds and technical skills in the team, we aim to play a role at the interface between the different aspects of doing science with Earth data. We believe that observation- and model-related developments and improvments happen together, beneficiting from interactions and feedbacks in both ways. Models are part of the process of designing and exploiting observational data, and observational data stimulate in many way the developments of the models themseves. Furthermore, both model and observational communities nowadays face the same challenges as how to deal with increasing amounts of data to process, exploit and share. In Datlas, we share an integrated vision of these different aspects and we can team up to address them together.

Read more here about the different science projects we are involved in.

Our values

Datlas was created as a branch of the Oxalis-SCOP company (legal headquaters).

Oxalis-SCOP is a French cooperative of entrepreneurs created in 1997. It hosts more than 250 entrepreneurs spread all over the country. Its headquarters are located in Aix-les-Bains in Savoie region and seven regional branches are attached to it, including Datlas, which was created in October 2021. With a turnover of more than 11 million euros (2021) and a capital of 682K€, Oxalis-SCOP is mainly owned by its employees, thus benefiting from a solid financial base thanks to its own funds.

The entrepreneurs at Oxalis all share the same idea of cooperation and of a different kind of entrepreneurship that responds to certain values: gender equality, non-discrimination, respect for the environment, participative democracy. The intention of Oxalis is to create an innovative form of economic and social organization, based on three fundamental dimensions: the development of economic activities through cooperation, the emancipation of people, the will to be a referent actor of social transformation. Last year, Oxalis adopted an action plan for gender equality and a commitment plan for the integration of disabilities. Sensitive to environmental issues, Oxalis encourages energy sobriety by limiting travel and digital footprint whenever possible.

Oxalis has seen a growth in its R&D activities for several years and has been granted CIR approval since 2016. Oxalis hosts specialized R&D services in the fields of human and social sciences, economics and management, legal and political sciences, as well as in computer science, oceanography and archaeology. The “Research Innovation Development” office within Oxalis aims to stimulate new research dynamics, to centralize and coordinate the management of projects and to facilitate the dissemination and transfer of results.

Some of our funding agencies and partners: