https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bernard_(engineer)https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bernard_(ing%C3%A9nieur) After graduating from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace in 1965, Mr. Bernard joined Dassault Aviation in 1967 as a theoretical aerodynamics engineer. There, he specialized in the geometrical definition of aircraft and established a Computer Aided Design/Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) department where he launched CATIA in 1977, the first 3-D designing system of its kind. In 1981, Mr. Bernard set up Dassault Systèmes, a subsidiary created by Dassault Aviation to further develop CATIA, and was appointed President. Under his direction, Dassault Systèmes established a partnership with IBM to market CATIA worldwide and extended considerably the functionalities of CATIA, which evolved from a limited set of 3-D applications for aircraft design, into a modular and open architecture capable of integrating a large number of leading-edge applications. Dassault Systèmes became in the early 90s, a worldwide leader with prestigious references in the aerospace as well as the automotive industries. The company grew from its original 25 employees to more than 8000 employees in 2006.Mr Bernard retired from Dassault Systèmes at the end of 2006.Mr Bernard is now a Member of the Board and/or an Executive Advisor of several organizations. Mr. Bernard was honored with the 1997 Award from the French “Académie Nationale de l’Air et de l’Espace”, as well as by the Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine and the National Air & Space Museum of the USA as being the “inventor of CATIA”.