What is the core business of the UTC subsidiary UTeam that you head up?

UTeam was also found­ed when UTC was cre­at­ed and works with its entire ecosys­tem. This agile and ‘facil­i­ta­tor’ pri­vate com­pa­ny is whol­ly owned by UTC and its main mis­sion is to liaise between UTC lab­o­ra­to­ries and socio-eco­nom­ic play­ers to set up research projects or ser­vices, organ­ise short train­ing cours­es and sci­en­tif­ic events. At the same time, UTeam man­ages its own relat­ed activ­i­ties, such as exper­tise and con­sult­ing assign­ments and engi­neer­ing ser­vices through its engi­neer­ing divi­sion. All of these activ­i­ties enable UTeam to devel­op part­ner­ships and lever­age the lab­o­ra­to­ries’ resources in order to con­tribute to UTC’s rep­u­ta­tion, with­out depend­ing on or receiv­ing any pub­lic funding.

Does UTeam exist, in a sense, to oil the wheels of UTC?

Well, the short answer is “yes”, and as such we ensure that the lab­o­ra­to­ries‘ skills are high­ly vis­i­ble, sup­port­ing an aver­age 300 projects each year for around 150 lec­tur­ercum- research sci­en­tists and engi­neers plus con­sul­tants, con­tribut­ing to the renew­al of the lab­o­ra­to­ries’ resources. We also have a very help­ful HR depart­ment when it comes to recruit­ing engi­neers for research projects. I start­ed my career at UTeam 10 years ago and, with my past expe­ri­ence in oth­er pub­lic research insti­tu­tions, I can only praise the effi­cien­cy of such a sub­sidiary for the devel­op­ment of part­ner­ship-based research. UTeam is designed for (and by) lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tists and our team of eight (lawyers, accoun­tants, etc.) is con­stant­ly improv­ing its prac­tice and pro­to­cols to make it even eas­i­er for the aca­d­e­mics to put togeth­er their appli­ca­tions, and this we do and ensure, with a com­bi­na­tion of con­vic­tion and determination!

How does UTeam contribute to the development of engineering?

Take, for exam­ple, the project work­shops set up with the Four­ni­val Altesse brush fac­to­ry in Mouy, in the Oise area. Once again, this proves that when an indus­tri­al part­ner has an engi­neer­ing prob­lem, it can turn to UTC, our aca­d­e­mics and our stu­dents to devel­op tai­lor-made solu­tions. UTeam is there to pro­vide admin­is­tra­tive, legal and finan­cial sup­port for the project from start to fin­ish. These project work­shops also lead to oth­er pos­i­tive devel­op­ments, such as the indus­tri­al part­ner tar­get­ing stu­dents for recruit­ment or the launch of a larg­er-scale research project, for exam­ple based on one of the stu­dents’ the­ses. UTeam is and will always be in line with UTC’s mis­sions of research, edu­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy transfer.

KD