Four months after his election, French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited the IRCAD Institute (Research Institute against Digestive Cancer) on the 6th of September under the guidance of Professor Jacques Marescaux, President of the Institute. Theme of the visit: Research, Innovation, Robotics and New Surgical Technologies, Competitivity Pole. On this occasion, Nicolas Sarkozy also discovered the ASIA-IRCAD project, IRCAD's ''twin'' training and research center which will be inaugurated in May 2008 in Taiwan.