Artificial intelligence (AI) holds more and more importance in our lives and in our work. While AI undeniably provides a smart and useful companion, the current debates of whether it may replace us altogether in our tasks highlights the role and importance of social interactions and emotions in the work environment at large.

In this non-astrophysics seminar, I will present a recent study whose goal is to identify socio-professional (a.k.a. transversal, transferable, or generally "soft") skills that are critical in the transformation and innovation of companies/industries. As it turns out, most of these skills are actually acquired or at least strengthened throughout a career in fundamental research, including during the PhD. This is not surprising as transformation, innovation, but also breakthroughs, creativity etc... are common motivations in both worlds in which we seek answers to questions but we also seek questions themselves, within a complex environment and network of people.

Many difficulties arise when dealing with soft skills, however: identifying them, acquiring and/or realizing they have been acquired, improving them, measuring them, making them valuable, and convincing other people they have been acquired. All in all, while most soft skills are well-known, the process of sorting, grouping, ranking them is necessary to set reference frameworks that can be acknowledged by most people. The purpose of this talk is to describe what soft skills are, how they are an integral part of research, and preliminary thoughts on how they can be applied/converted to non-academic world.

Organisation : Frédéric GALLIANO