UTC-Com­pieg­ne and the Uni­ver­si­ty Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC – Paris 6)) are engaged in strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion in terms of teach­ing, train­ing research, val­ori­sa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy transfer. 

UTC-Com­pieg­ne, in this oper­a­tion becomes an asso­ciate mem­ber of the PRES Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ties, rein­forc­ing its poten­tial for inno­va­tion poli­cies, improved vis­i­bil­i­ty, notably on an inter­na­tion­al lev­el and this is a major chal­lenge that arose as the French Gov­ern­ment start­ed restruc­tur­ing the Uni­ver­si­ties and research, set­ting up what they call the “Future cam­pus” pro­gramme. In this con­text, UTC-Com­pieg­ne and UPMC start­ed talks to bring their insti­tu­tions clos­er in terms of sci­ence and research poli­cies, and with the aim to cre­ate the 1st uni­ver­si­ty tech­no­log­i­cal and engi­neer­ing pole in France, under the ban­ner of PRES Sor­bonne” indi­cat­ed Jean-Charles POMEROL, Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Pres­i­dent of UPMC. 

Bridge building between teaching, training and research

The pro­gramme will start in the area of research inten­sive train­ing and will lead to ‘dou­ble-degrees’, notably at doc­tor­al lev­el (Bac +8 in France). “In France, tech­nolo­gies are addressed by the Grandes Ecoles (major engi­neer­ing schools) which is nat­ur­al, giv­en their role to pro­duce qual­i­fied engi­neers, but we must admit that they do not do enough research work nor pro­duce a rea­son­able num­ber of doc­tor­al the­ses. If we look at the ‘uni­ver­sal’ and pluridis­ci­pli­nary uni­ver­si­ties, and a good exam­ple here is the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIT), what we would like to devel­op with UTC-Com­pieg­ne are engi­neer­ing mas­ters’ degrees asso­ci­at­ed to the doc­tor­ates.”, under­scores the Vice–Chancellor and Pres­i­dent of UPMC. A wide and adapt­ed choice of spe­cial­i­ties would be pro­posed. Under­grad­u­ates doing their degree at UPMC could matric­u­late at UTC to study, for exam­ple, biotech­nolo­gies, green chem­istry, agro-resources or process engi­neer­ing … “Stu­dent engi­neers from UTC-Com­pieg­ne could enrol for cours­es in ener­gy engi­neer­ing at a master’s degree lev­el at UMPC or fol­low more in-depth cours­es in math­e­mat­ics and com­put­er sci­ence,” explains Pierre CHARREYON, Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Pres­i­dent of UTC-Compiegne.

Inducing collaboration between the first two CNRS engineering ‘collegia’

UTC-Com­pieg­ne and the CNRS set up the 1st ‘Col­legium’ – UTC/CNRS INSIS (cf. Inter­view of Pierre GUILLON). Their joint objec­tive was to cre­ate a dynam­ic sci­en­tif­ic sym­bio­sis, bear­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly on lec­tures and train­ing, research and indus­tri­al inno­va­tion. This part­ner­ship is in keep­ing with the pol­i­cy advo­cat­ed by each estab­lish­ment, to devel­op part­ner­ships, to rein­force their tech­no­log­i­cal research and to improve their vis­i­bil­i­ty and noto­ri­ety. The two CNRS engi­neer­ing Col­le­gia, sup­port­ed by UTC-Com­pieg­ne and UPMC (Uni­ver­si­ty Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris 6)), are com­plete and unique sci­en­tif­ic pro­grammes that serve inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty through­out the nation­al ter­ri­to­ry, and will start devel­op­ing syn­er­gies in terms of research work, teach­ing pro­grammes and inno­va­tion. “Anoth­er col­legium is cur­rent­ly being put togeth­er between UPMC and the CNRS (Sor­bonne Tech)” indi­cates Jean-Charles POMEROL. “In this part­ner­ship with UTC-Com­pieg­ne – which has set up its own col­legium with the CNRS — our aim is to seek clos­er bonds and increased com­ple­men­tary between the two col­le­gia.” Two days of con­fer­ence have been planned to dis­cuss pos­si­bil­i­ties in the fields of automats and bio­log­i­cal reac­tors and if we con­verge, these areas could well start our co-oper­a­tion in research, even if, as the Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Pres­i­dent of UTC-Com­pieg­ne point­ed out “No par­tic­u­lar theme has been ful­ly defined to date. The over­ar­ch­ing aim is to see our research teams meet, get to know each oth­er and then only we shall be able to envis­age set­ting up joint pro­grammes, notably on a Euro­pean scale.” 

Developing joint valorisation actions

Both estab­lish­ments are con­sid­er­ing set­ting up a joint Insti­tut Carnot. By doing so, the uni­ver­si­ties could pro­mote and joint devel­op val­ori­sa­tion for the research results pub­lished by their lab­o­ra­to­ries and activ­i­ties in tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer. Each estab­lish­ment will have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to approach the ser­vices of the oth­er estab­lish­ment, for the pur­pose of ten­der­ing for calls for projects or to assure the prepa­ra­tion of dossiers that relates to man­age­ment of patents, soft­ware pack­ages or indus­tri­al prop­er­ty trade­marks. Such mutu­al exchanges of “exper­tise” would be enact­ed through a SATT (French for a com­pa­ny for accel­er­at­ed tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer) and seed fund­ing to launch mar­ket-ready projects as they come out from the UTC-Com­pieg­ne Inno­va­tion Cen­tre. The agree­ment will allow the part­ners to answer for both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al calls