After two years of devel­op­ment, four Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Research Cen­tres (CRIs) were estab­lished in April 2026. This rep­re­sents a flag­ship project of the Research Direc­torate for the com­ing years.

Faced with the grow­ing com­plex­i­ty of con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges and the issues sur­round­ing envi­ron­men­tal, dig­i­tal and soci­etal tran­si­tions, UTC-Com­pieg­ne, through the CRIs, These CRIs will focus on four main themes: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) and Tech­nol­o­gy Inten­sive Sys­tems; Liv­ing well – age­ing well; Decar­bon­i­sa­tion of Soci­ety and sys­tems; and final­ly, Resource man­age­ment (water, air, soils).

The first theme is man­aged by Pedro Castil­lo (UTC-Heudi­asyc), Fady Mohareb (UTC-GEC) and Flo­ri­an de Vuyst (UTC-BMBI); the sec­ond is man­aged by Cécile Legal­lais (UTC-BMBI), Miri­an Kubo (UTC-GEC) and Maxime Hachette (UTC-Avenues); the third by Berk Celik (Avenues) and Erwan Guénin (TIMR); and final­ly the last theme is under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of Nadia Bous­se­ta (UTC-TIMR) and Hani Al-Haj­jar (UTC-Rober­val). “Hav­ing sev­er­al the­mat­ic coor­di­na­tors with dif­fer­ent back­grounds is very much in line with the aim of strength­en­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty. All UTC research staff are wel­come to join them to exchange ideas or work on these themes. We are con­vinced that it is through the con­ver­gence of knowl­edge, meth­ods and per­spec­tives that the most inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able solu­tions to the chal­lenges of the con­tem­po­rary world are devel­oped,” says Frédéric Lamar­que, UTC’s Direc­tor of Research.

What is the role of the CRI coor­di­na­tors? “It is twofold. On the one hand, their role is to pro­vide sci­en­tif­ic guid­ance for col­lec­tive reflec­tion and to devel­op a com­mu­ni­ty of research sci­en­tists and engi­neers inter­est­ed in a theme relat­ed to a giv­en CRI. For instance, when we talk about AI, this res­onates with both the ‘Liv­ing Well and Age­ing Well’ CRI—through AI and health—and the ‘Resource Man­age­ment’ CRI—with pre­dic­tive AI, for exam­ple. Fur­ther­more, they play a struc­tur­ing role in that they must ensure that the shar­ing of research themes is effec­tive and that there is gen­uine co-devel­op­ment of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research projects which could prove eli­gi­ble for new calls for pro­pos­als, includ­ing the one due to begin in ear­ly Novem­ber and close in Jan­u­ary 2027. “Fol­low­ing the assess­ment phase for the var­i­ous projects, we will be able to inform the suc­cess­ful appli­cants which projects have been fund­ed so that the PhD stu­dents can be enrolled at the Doc­tor­al School,” explains Frédéric Lamarque.

Three TWIN (The­ses With INter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty) projects, aris­ing from the first call for pro­pos­als, have already been launched as part of the ‘TWIN 2026’ inter­dis­ci­pli­nary pro­gramme, with six the­ses to be produced.

The first project, coor­di­nat­ed by Franck Mer­li­er from UTC-GEC and Sel­ma Baati from UTC-Avenues, is enti­tled ‘Mon­i­tor­ing PFAS (so-called for­ev­er chem­i­cals): link­ing ana­lyt­i­cal inno­va­tion and pub­lic pol­i­cy’. One PhD the­sis is devot­ed to the “devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence agents for ana­lyt­i­cal pre­dic­tion and the auto­mat­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of emerg­ing con­t­a­m­i­nants using LCHRMS”, whilst the sec­ond focus­es on “the pro­duc­tion and use of envi­ron­men­tal and health data in the con­text of ter­ri­to­r­i­al gov­er­nance. The case of the Oise riv­er basin’. This project lies at the inter­sec­tion of three CRIs, as it address­es the themes of resource man­age­ment, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and decarbonisation.

The sec­ond project, AMPIRE from the ‘Liv­ing Well and Age­ing Well’ CRI, coor­di­nat­ed by Khalil Ben Man­sour of the UTC-BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry and Malek Habak at UTC-Rober­val, focus­es on ‘Quan­ti­fied analy­sis of instru­ment­ed pros­thet­ic gait: towards per­son­alised, con­nect­ed and field-trans­fer­able reha­bil­i­ta­tion’. The first PhD the­sis is ded­i­cat­ed to the study of ‘bio­mark­ers of flu­id­i­ty for the per­son­alised opti­mi­sa­tion of pros­thet­ic walk­ing’, whilst the sec­ond focus­es on ‘the inte­gra­tion of sen­sors into low­er-limb pros­the­ses: design, reli­a­bil­i­ty and com­fort of use’.

Final­ly, the last project, DASVIDANIA, as part of the CRI ‘Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Tech­nol­o­gy Inten­sive Sys­tems’ research cen­tre, coor­di­nat­ed by Jean-Daniel Cha­zot at UTC-Rober­val and Jos­sué Cari­no Esco­bar at UTC’s Heudi­asyc lab­o­ra­to­ry, is enti­tled: ‘Autonomous acoustic sur­veil­lance and detec­tion drone pow­ered by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence’. The first top­ic is ded­i­cat­ed to the study of a ‘robust adap­tive con­trol sys­tem for a drone using an AI-based dis­tur­bance com­pen­sa­tion approach’. The sec­ond project con­cerns ‘the opti­mi­sa­tion of a drone-mount­ed micro­phone array for track­ing an acoustic tar­get, and noise reduc­tion in acoustic mea­sure­ments under flow conditions’.

Fur­ther­more, for UTC-Com­pieg­ne, strength­en­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research through these CRIs is a way of set­ting itself apart from oth­er insti­tu­tions. “Indeed, we wish to make this a hall­mark of the uni­ver­si­ty. We began with research. Why? We are a key play­er in the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance, which estab­lished inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Insti­tutes and Ini­tia­tives in 2019; our CRIs will now serve as a spring­board for us to join them. We have, how­ev­er, bro­ken new ground by set­ting up dual-the­sis projects, in that each the­sis will focus on a spe­cif­ic dis­ci­pli­nary aspect, whilst at the same time draw­ing on the work of the oth­er. The aim is to fos­ter dia­logue between two PhD stu­dents and their super­vi­so­ry teams on a giv­en sub­ject, using two dif­fer­ent approach­es,” he explains.

What are the objec­tives of the CRIs? “We are pur­su­ing a twofold objec­tive. The first can be illus­trat­ed by TWIN, where we are not fol­low­ing a mod­el of two side-by-side the­ses, but rather one in which the data from one the­sis will be used by the oth­er – not nec­es­sar­i­ly because the lat­ter is an expert in that field, but to advance its own sub­ject using reli­able data. In short, we want PhD stu­dents to be more open-mind­ed by the time they com­plete their the­ses, hav­ing fre­quent­ly and close­ly engaged with work done in anoth­er dis­ci­pline. The sec­ond objec­tive – though this is a gam­ble – is that this will cre­ate a mul­ti­pli­er effect,” he explains.

This gam­ble appears to have paid off well, since the Hauts-de-France Region has co-fund­ed four of the first six the­ses. “As for future projects, we have also decid­ed to be more proac­tive in seek­ing Euro­pean fund­ing over the com­ing years,” adds Frédéric Lamar­que. UTC-Com­pieg­ne has no inten­tion to lim­it an inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty approach to research and intends to build on this momen­tum and incor­po­rate it into its teach­ing pro­grammes as well. “We are going to extend thee inter­dis­ci­pli­nary dimen­sion to the deliv­ery of edu­ca­tion­al projects span­ning sev­er­al semes­ters, which will address tran­si­tion-relat­ed issues in gen­er­al, cov­er­ing top­ics involv­ing dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives such as ‘Tech­nol­o­gy, Sci­ence and the Human­i­ties’ approach­es, those of ‘Engi­neer­ing Sci­ences’, or even those of experts in the envi­ron­ment or health, for exam­ple. This will raise the lev­el of aware­ness amongst stu­dents – engi­neer­ing stu­dents in par­tic­u­lar – in regard to research-relat­ed themes, whilst also train­ing them in inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty per se, which, in my view, has a more method­olog­i­cal dimen­sion. We want to train engi­neers with a broad per­spec­tive because it is at the inter­sec­tion of knowl­edge, meth­ods and per­spec­tives that the most inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able solu­tions are devel­oped,” con­cludes Frédéric Lamarque.

MSD