IPAL is a French-Singaporean joint research laboratory, based in Singapore and formed in 1998 as a special overseas French National Center for Scientific Research laboratory (Postulant Team — Equipe Postulante EP CNRS) in order to create a local framework for collaborative research projects among CNRS, the National University of Singapore — School of Computing, and the Institute for Infocomm Research of the Agency for Science, Technology And Research. This first research structure evolved to the status of Research Formation in Evolution (Formation de Recherche en Evolution FRE CNRS) since 2000. In 2007, IPAL became a UMI CNRS lab (CNRS International Mixed research Unit — Unité Mixte Internationale - the highest scientific ranking among the CNRS labs overseas). The UMI agreement was signed in January 2007, for an initial period of 4 years (renewable), between the Institute of Sciences and Technologies for Information and Engineering (INST2I) of the CNRS, I²R/A*STAR, NUS, and the University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France. This agreement has been renewed in February 2011, by adding two new top collaborators : the Institute Mines TELECOM and the University Pierre et Marie Curie.