🏆R&D Community Awards 2025

January 30, 2026

Our annual ceremony, where we celebrate achievements together.

For the third consecutive year, we gathered to celebrate our achievements within the R&D community and recognize the contributions of all our R&D Ambassadors. At Criteo, expressing gratitude to our teammates is a consistent practice throughout the entire company. In our R&D department, our expert community embraces this crucial aspect of our culture and holds a ceremony that celebrates the significance of our people.

The ceremony was once again hosted by Kini (Head of Developer Relations) and Diarmuid (Chief Technology Officer).

A Look Back at 2025 ⏪

Summarizing an entire year in just one slide isn’t easy. Let’s look at some highlights from last year.

A slide compiling the most important points to highlight from 2025 — Some numbers from 2025

We organized 22 events at our offices. From Paris, to Grenoble, to Barcelona, or Toronto. We were everywhere. Our collaboration with external communities clearly illustrates our commitment to community building.
We contributed to more than 10 conferences. From welcoming people to our booth, sharing knowledge with R&D speakers, or enabling Criteos to attend and grow, we understand why being part of conferences matters, and we will continue supporting these events. Together, we share knowledge, learn, and grow.
We published over 50 articles on this tech blog. It is, by far, our most active online channel, and we will continue investing in our writers because there are plenty of things to share with everyone. Stay tuned! The editorial calendar for 2026 looks fantastic!
Is Criteo doing AI and innovation? We have been doing it for over 10 years and are excelling. We will continue to push the boundaries by applying science to our products. Agentic AI is kicking, so… wait for it. More than 30 papers were accepted last year, and we held our very first AI Symposium about “Trustworthy AI”.
And we shouldn’t forget about our internal activities and programs, like the VPTO Open Source program, which was officially launched last year, allowing Criteos to use Volunteer Paid Time Off to contribute to open source projects. How cool is that! Additionally, there’s the Tech Summit, our global tech conference, where we had 30 talks by more than 35 speakers. Awesome!

Awards Ceremony 🏆

Now it’s time to announce the winners of the Community Awards! Kini selected the candidates for each award, and all Criteos in R&D were allowed to vote. More than 10% of Criteo R&D (over 100 individuals) participated by casting their votes.

A picture of the trophies for all the categories — Our shiny trophies for the 2025 awards

Nominations

Best Article of the Year

Top three most viewed and read articles in 2025 (sorted by publication date)

Best Community Builder of the Year

Andrey Solomatin is everywhere. Yes, that’s it. If there is a meetup or event at the Paris office, he will be there. He goes beyond being a regular volunteer. In fact, in 2025, he hosted the PyLadies community at our Paris office, and it was a very nice event. He builds community even if he doesn’t realize it (even internally with the Python Guild).
Mercy Orangi was at the heart of our community activities in Toronto during 2025. From a Criteo Campus event to a Hackathon during Toronto Tech Week to serving as the Master of Ceremonies at the Women in Tech meetup we celebrated at the University of Toronto. And, based on the incredible positive feedback we got, she was just the best MC ever. She is community.
Nicu Murgu is basically the driving force behind all the activities we run in Bucharest. The conferences held in 2025 were definitely a success, thanks to Nicu’s involvement. He reaches out to people, creates connections, knows how to attract attendees to the booth, and has a knack for inspiring other Criteos to be part of something bigger, and so on. Without a doubt, Nicu is THE community builder for our Bucharest office.

Best Paper of the Year

Best Speaker of the Year

Diana Cibu went from 0 to 200 in one year, going from showing some interest in public speaking to being on stage twice. And she hasn’t stopped there because 2026 is already bringing more opportunities her way (at least a WomenTech meetup and a conference in Madrid as an international speaker).
Raphaël Bizos is already one of our most active speakers in the community, gaining more experience each year. You can definitely say that by following his “speaker’s career,” which started at meetups in Paris and led to attending internal conferences outside France.
Emmanuel Guérin always delivers. Whether it’s an internal talk, a Criteo Tech Summit session, a meetup, or a talk at France’s top conference (DevoxxFR). Never let you down, always with the best attitude and a great topic to present.

Top Ambassador Of The Year

But, wait? Why is this? A new category? 😅 Yep, let us tell you why.

Some people don’t fit into just one category. Due to their impact and way of supporting communities, their presence goes beyond any walls. That’s why we decided to create a new, broader category, aiming to recognize those individuals with a huge impact. It’s fair to acknowledge their contributions to reward them and raise visibility of their endless participation.

How did this work?

First, we picked five Ambassadors who had a significant impact in 2025 through their contributions. Then, for the voting process:

One was voted on by the Tech Leaders, Dev Leads, and EMGs.
One was voted on by previous winners
One was voted on by the audience in real time during the Ceremony.

2025 Finalists

Alejandra Paredes has become a role model both internally and externally. Their contributions to the community are countless. From founding WomenDoTechToo, now an established movement within Criteo, to collaborating with external organizations like Ada Tech School in Paris, to fostering the Women in Tech at Criteo community and empowering others around her. She has reached a point where she becomes an enabler for others to participate in our initiatives.

Erwan Velu is bold and courageous. He delivers high-quality results, whether running a user group, supporting KernelRecipes, or promoting VPTO days for Open Source contributions. Different topics, same attitude: go big and do it right. His contributions impact people beyond R&D. If that’s not a top ambassador, we don’t know what else could be.

Khanh Tuong Maudoux is everywhere. For real. If you check 75% of the pictures from meetups and conferences in Paris this year where Criteo had a presence, you will probably spot him (or you actually have the pictures because he took them). And we are not talking about just attending. He plays a key role in positioning Criteo Paris as the go-to place for local meetups and is always looking for new opportunities. The same goes for conferences, where he cares about our image as a tech company and is always the first to raise his hand to participate. One thing we want to highlight is how he’s always there for speakers and meetups, humble and behind the scenes, where the important work usually happens.

Mariia Vladimirova embodies all the skills you might want in an ambassador. She creates opportunities, like the AI Symposium that took place last year. She shares knowledge, whether she’s presenting a paper as part of her role as a researcher or taking the stage at European Women In Tech, an international conference. She promotes Criteo and raises awareness by creating quality content and posting it on social media, always with great impact and reach. She enables others; she’s a reference within the group with a voice that matters.

Sylvain Dedieu is THE Tech Speaker. We believe he sets the standard for what a tech speaker should be. This isn’t just about technical expertise, which he has; it’s about choosing the right technical topics, creating content, and elaborating on ideas to maximize learning from others. To finally excel in delivery. You can write all of this in ChatGPT, and the chatbot will generate a photo of Sylvain. He’s already a seasoned speaker both inside and outside France, with a track record that, even when impressive, doesn’t fully reflect the hard work it took to reach that point. Behind this, Sylvain is a community builder at heart, always trying to put the Grenoble office on the map. Lately, he’s gone beyond the ambassador label to also be an enabler and to provide a space where other R&D speakers can grow.

And the winner is…

Article of the Year: Agents, APIs and Advertising.
Community Builder of the Year: Andrey Solomatin.
Paper of the Year: Improving Consistency Models with Generator-Augmented Flows.
Speaker of the Year: Diana Cibu.
Top Ambassadors Of The Year: Sylvain Dedieu, Alejandra Paredes & Mariia Vladimirova.

We cannot be prouder of our Criteos and the community they nurture every day. Everyone deserves recognition and an award. Once again, the ceremony was a testament to our community’s hard work and dedication, and we hope that this recognition will inspire everyone to continue their pursuit of innovation.

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists! 🏆

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