The natural playground of IDA can only be international. There is no research worthy of this name, that would be limited by borders, be they national, institutional or disciplinary. The international actions which primarily concern IDA are therefore those with a multidisciplinary added-value. The CNRS-Weizmann Institute Associated European Laboratory (LEA) in NanoBio Sciences nicknamed "NaBi" surely stands on top of the list in terms of its structuring added value for our Institute and of its scientifically boosting downfalls for IDA. In our second yearly review at the Biomérieux Center in Annecy, all participants, including top international experts and CNRS officials, agreed as to the taking-off of this highly visible action after only three years. Let me also cite a burgeoning action of potentially similar scale between CNRS and the National Science Council of Taiwan, with such prestigious partners as National Taiwan University as well as others, which nurtures projects ranging from plasmonics to biophotonics and imaging. I cannot omit the Max Planck Institute, in particular the Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen. One of the purposes of my upcoming visits there (two or three months every year in the coming years under the auspices of the Humboldt Foundation) is to reingorce the ties of IDA with the newly founded Institute whereby almost every domain of photonics and nanophotonics, including molecular nanophotonics and biophotonics, is being addressed.

I much prefer to think of IDA in terms of building-up a new culture ans new practices, rather than designate this or that specific achievement at the risk of unfairness to others. Although we surely need to assert ourselves on precise results and eventual breakthroughs at interfaces (which are diffusing within the core laboratories, and not just at their frontiers), I do not believe in compettion for the sake of it, which is sometimes at the expense of originality and independance. Ranking and comparison at the best possible international level are necessary sanctions, positive ir negative of our activities, but not an objective per se. This being said, let me rather turn to people who are the real enablers of IDA's projects cement its activities and pinpoint a few of them who illustrate with talent, competence, and the right dose of irrational belief and sometimes passion that is a necessary catalyst to any worthy human enterprise: namely Nguyen Chi-Thanh and Joseph Lautru. Thanh has managed to propel the traditional activities of LPQM in polymer based photonics, from telecom applications into biophotonics and biosensors, building-up on the same principles of light confinement and guiding, integrated resonators and interferometers that had been developed earlier (and still are) to the benefit of high speed modulators and such. We owe him, as well to talented students that he guides, the achievements of record high finesse optical circuits that sense biomolecules (the latter with Malcolm Buckle, Claude Nogues, Hervé Leh, and others). Joseph is running by and large the technological facilities of the Institute (formerly known as LPQM's clean room, then upgraded into IDA's technology platform) where his know-how and creative technology has enabled new developments in plasmonics and microfluidics, the latter being a well developed "horizontal" domain at IDA whereby another talented research engineer, Jean-Pierre Lefere, is also playing a leading role.