Patrice Morgallet
I trained as a biologist — a postgraduate degree in hydrobiology at Jussieu, Paris — and moved early into computing, at a time when one learned the trade on Digital machines. I stayed for forty years.
Most of that career was spent in heavy industry: ACOR Informatique, Creusot Loire Industrie, then Sollac and ArcelorMittal at Fos-sur-Mer, where I ran process computing for the Ironmaking department. Real-time systems, blast furnaces, teams, and a great deal of OpenVMS.
Since 2016 I have been independent, based in Bédoin at the foot of Mont Ventoux. Along the way I built an agricultural drone business (NDVI imaging, geomatics) and a 3D-printing workshop. For the past few years I have focused on two things: artificial intelligence one can run at home, and the preservation of OpenVMS systems.
What ties it together is an engineer's distrust of dependencies one does not control. An AI model you cannot host and a system nobody can maintain are the same risk in two forms. The Sovra tools grew out of that: I first built them for my own needs, on my own GPUs, before turning them into services.
Alongside client work I develop tools to assist the decipherment of ancient scripts — the rongorongo of Easter Island among others — and apply handwritten-text recognition to 17th-century archives. These are my testing grounds; what I learn there ends up in the solutions I deliver.
I am a VSI Ambassador (VMS Software Inc. community programme) and a Knight of the French Order of Agricultural Merit.