We enjoyed a fine suc­cess with this year’s new ver­sion fo the “Research Nights” which took place Novem­ber 18–27, 2024, over 10 years after the pre­vi­ous sim­i­lar event was held at UTC. The objec­tive: to bring the stu­dent com­mu­ni­ty clos­er to the cut­ting-edge tech­no­log­i­cal research car­ried out in the eight UTC laboratories.

This most recent edi­tion of “Research Nights”, held last Novem­ber, was a great suc­cess with stu­dents, thanks in par­tic­u­lar to the guid­ed tours that gave them an insight into the work of the lec­tur­er-cum­re­search sci­en­tists and engi­neers who train them on a dai­ly basis. “This first edi­tion of the new Research Nights for­mat was a suc­cess with engi­neer­ing and Mas­ter’s stu­dents and it empha­sised their inter­est in research car­ried out in UTC’s research lab­o­ra­to­ries. It pro­vides a good show­case for the research work that is car­ried out main­ly as part of doc­tor­al stud­ies and it allows stu­dents to get a first-hand expe­ri­ence of what doc­tor­al work is all about. This helps them to bet­ter envis­age a pos­si­ble con­tin­u­a­tion of their stud­ies with a doc­tor­ate,” says Chris­tine Prelle, direc­tor of the Doc­tor­al PhD School, who was present at each evening’s event and was able to answer stu­dents’ ques­tions about doc­tor­al stud­ies. This was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to invite stu­dents to sign up for the new inter-semes­ter edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ty, API DOC, to extend their under­stand­ing of what a doc­tor­ate entails, through aware­ness-rais­ing of research meth­ods and immer­sion in lab­o­ra­to­ries in pairs with a doc­tor­al stu­dent. The API DOC took place in Jan­u­ary. “There are a few adjust­ments to be made for the next edi­tion of Research Nights, but the idea will remain the same: to make research car­ried out at UTC bet­ter known to our stu­dents and, who knows, to trig­ger some voca­tions for research work and careers!”

An event labelled “Industry Week”

The aim of these Research Nights was there­fore to bring the stu­dent com­mu­ni­ty clos­er to research, under the lead­er­ship of Prof. Claire Rossi, direc­tor of UTC, and thanks to col­lab­o­ra­tive work involv­ing a stu­dent who was the dri­ving force behind the project, Flo­ri­an Mious­set, the research depart­ment head­ed by Frédéric Lamar­que, the Doc­tor­al PhD School, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ment, as well as the eight direc­tors of the eight UTC research units. Over the course of six evenings, the stu­dents were able to enter the heart of UTC’s lab­o­ra­to­ries of excel­lence, which are TIMR, Avenues, BMBI & GEC, Heudi­asyc & LMAC, Costech and Rober­val. Each research unit wel­comed between 40 and 50 vis­i­tors. This event labelled “Indus­try Week”, received a total of more than 170 stu­dents, in the pres­ence of SATT Lutech, a facil­i­ta­tor for the trans­fer of research to indus­try. “In Decem­ber 2023, dur­ing a meet­ing with Pro­fes­sor Rossi, I asked her if it was pos­si­ble to relaunch this event, in a new and more sus­tain­able for­mat. She imme­di­atel²y sup­port­ed me in this project. Frédéric Lamar­que, research direc­tor, and Chris­tine Prelle, direc­tor of the grad­u­ate school, then helped to bring it all to fruition. My role was above all to devel­op, with the UTC com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ment, mate­ri­als to pro­mote the event, posters, posts on social net­works, reg­is­tra­tion web­site, ban­ner on the leg­endary foot­bridge of the Ben­jamin Franklin cen­tre, newslet­ter, wall­pa­per on all UTC PCs,” explains Flo­ri­an Mious­set, com­put­er engi­neer­ing stu­dent and linch­pin of the project.

Breaking down the barriers between the two worlds

More than 90 mem­bers of UTC’s eight lab­o­ra­to­ries were involved: doc­tor­al stu­dents, research pro­fes­sors, research engi­neers, etc. “This enthu­si­asm for the event reflects the desire of stu­dents to learn more about the research car­ried out at UTC, and the will­ing­ness of research staff to share their work with their stu­dents. Research of excel­lence is tak­ing place right next to our class­rooms: it seems impor­tant to me to take an inter­est in it, to be proud of it and to make it shine”, adds the stu­dent for whom one of the most impor­tant issues is to strength­en the link between UTC research and the stu­dent com­mu­ni­ty, to arouse curiosity.

“Count­less projects are car­ried out right next to our lec­ture halls, but we know very lit­tle about them. The “Research Nights” help to break down the bar­ri­ers between these two worlds. By learn­ing more about what goes on in the lab­o­ra­to­ries relat­ed to your field, you gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the area in which you will be work­ing. This can then cre­ate links between our future com­pa­ny and the lab­o­ra­to­ries, to devel­op ever more inno­v­a­tive and ambi­tious projects that show­case French research.” For the next edi­tion, the idea is to wel­come even more stu­dents, but also researchers from oth­er lab­o­ra­to­ries or admin­is­tra­tive staff from UTC. ”It would be inter­est­ing to show­case oth­er research projects. This could help to make research even more inter­dis­ci­pli­nary in order to car­ry out largescale projects, Flo­ri­an Mious­set envis­ages. We could even dream of open­ing this event to the gen­er­al pub­lic! This could com­ple­ment the Fête de la Sci­ence, which is orga­nized every year and which UTC launched in 1992.”

KD