The CSTI Pole at UTC (Sci­en­tif­ic, Tech­ni­cal and Indus­tri­al Cul­tur­al events and activ­i­ties) clus­ter at UTC is respon­si­ble for the university’s sci­en­tif­ic out­reach through var­i­ous ini­tia­tives, includ­ing the annu­al Sci­ence Fes­ti­val, tech­nol­o­gy clubs and the Rober­val Prize.

One of the high­lights among the events organ­ised by UTC’s CSTI is its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Sci­ence Fes­ti­val, a major nation­al event open to all, which will take place from Octo­ber 3 ‑13, 2025 and for which UTC was a pio­neer. Launched by the then gov­ern­ment min­is­ter for Sci­ence and Research, Hubert Curien in 1991 and organ­ised since that time by the Min­istry of High­er Edu­ca­tion and Research, the Sci­ence Fes­ti­val offers free events to all audi­ences with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion for ten days every autumn and has done so for more than thir­ty years, with sci­en­tists and medi­a­tors shar­ing the results of research and how it is car­ried out with the pub­lic, in order to dis­cuss the soci­etal chal­lenges of sci­ence and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. “This fes­ti­val allows stu­dents to meet sci­en­tists and to dis­cov­er dif­fer­ent aspects of sci­ence while hav­ing fun. In par­tic­u­lar, we organ­ise a Sci­ence Vil­lage, reserved for an atten­dance of school­child­ren on Thurs­days and Fri­days. We aim at wel­com­ing an aver­age of 5 000 vis­i­tors, includ­ing 3 500 school­child­ren, to around 40 work­shops. We also organ­ise pub­lic talks in schools on top­ics such as bina­ry cod­ing and math­e­mat­ics, in part­ner­ship with the City of Com­piègne. The idea is to devel­op chil­dren’s skills and give them a taste for sci­ence,’ explains Karim El Kirat, lec­tur­er-cum­re­search sci­en­tist in bio­log­i­cal engi­neer­ing at UTC’s BMBI lab­o­ra­to­ry and head of the CSTI Depart­ment at UTC.

The Roberval Prize, a unique award in the scientific landscape

Anoth­er flag­ship ini­tia­tive for the CSTI cen­tre is the Rober­val Prize, which since 1986 has high­light­ed the excep­tion­al work of com­mu­ni­ca­tors and authors who con­tribute to mak­ing sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy acces­si­ble to all. This inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion, open to all French-speak­ing coun­tries, rewards work ded­i­cat­ed to explain­ing tech­nol­o­gy in French in five cat­e­gories: high­er edu­ca­tion, gen­er­al pub­lic, tele­vi­sion, youth and sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal jour­nal­ism in var­i­ous forms, includ­ing books, doc­u­men­taries, news­pa­per arti­cles, and dig­i­tal works. “There are also tech­nol­o­gy clubs as part of the Com­piègne city pol­i­cy project. We also sup­port high school stu­dents through­out the year in their stud­ies to give them a taste for sci­ence. In par­tic­u­lar, we work with the Cordées de la réus­site pro­gramme to raise aware­ness in the advan­tages of tak­ing engi­neer­ing stud­ies. And let’s not for­get the “immer­sion” days at UTC for 110 high school stu­dents. We also have a home­work and guid­ance sup­port sys­tem run by UTC stu­dents who are recruit­ed to help around 40 young peo­ple through­out the year for two hours a week.”

Introduction to algorithmics in Year 3

The project ‘Intro­duc­tion to Algo­rithms in Year 3’ aims to intro­duce young peo­ple to sci­ence, and more specif­i­cal­ly com­put­er sci­ence, through UTC stu­dents. The dis­cov­ery takes place through a work­shop designed by a stu­dent as part of an exper­i­men­tal cred­it course unit (CC). The work­shop was designed to be test­ed with Year 3 pupils at Les Cour­tils pri­ma­ry school in Estrées- Saint-Denis in the Oise Depart­ment. It uses robot­ic bees that can move around a grid, which the pupils learn to pro­gram (move for­ward, back­ward, turn left or right). “The aim is to under­stand what an algo­rithm is by using a sim­ple cook­ing recipe. The pupils have to gath­er the nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents and fol­low the steps to end up with the desired dish. Pic­tograms relat­ed to a pan­cake recipe are placed on a grid. The stu­dents must first organ­ise a copy of the pic­tograms in the cor­rect order, then pro­gramme the move­ments of a robot­ic bee to reach the pic­tograms placed on the grid. They can then check whether the robot col­lects the pic­tograms in the cor­rect order. Each stu­dent receives a cer­tifi­cate of ini­ti­a­tion to algo­rith­mics at the end of the work­shop,” explains Marie-Hélène Abel, direc­tor of the Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment at UTC. After this ini­tial imple­men­ta­tion in Jan­u­ary, a debrief­ing was con­duct­ed to pro­duce a work­shop tem­plate that was sent to the UTC stu­dent asso­ci­a­tion Sci­ences égales. Pairs of UTC stu­dents are being formed to repli­cate the work­shop in pri­ma­ry schools in the Oise depart­ment through the La main à la pâte asso­ci­a­tion. “Since then, a sec­ond work­shop has been held for kinder­garten chil­dren in Estrées-Saint-Denis, fol­lowed by two oth­ers in the spring at kinder­garten schools in Monchy-Humières and Sévi­gné in Com­piègne. In par­al­lel with the work­shop projects for pri­ma­ry school pupils in years 3 and 6, and even sec­ondary school pupils, oth­er projects are cur­rent­ly being developed.”

KD