The UTC Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion is a link between the UTC and the Soci­ety to build the world of tomor­row. To make sense and enrich its train­ing mod­el, such is the voca­tion of this part­ner­ship foun­da­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy of Com­piègne around its founders: UTC, UTC Alum­ni, Saint-Gob­ain Glass and Sopra Stéria since 2020.

The UTC Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion aims at sup­port­ing, enhanc­ing, financ­ing and pro­mot­ing actions for the devel­op­ment of inno­va­tion in the ser­vice of edu­ca­tion and cam­pus life. It is based on a shared project, a strong insti­tu­tion­al alliance in order to take up the tech­no­log­i­cal and human chal­lenges of tomor­row and to fed­er­ate all the actors around this project of com­mon pub­lic util­i­ty. Cre­at­ed in 2018, this part­ner­ship foun­da­tion accom­pa­nies “the uni­ver­si­ty in a dif­fer­ent way” and con­tributes to plac­ing the UTC at the heart of a net­work of spon­sors and donors from mul­ti­ple hori­zons. “The Foun­da­tion there­fore sup­ports and finances some of the inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship projects. It gives the means to explore and sup­port local­ly, or in inter­na­tion­al paths. And all this with­in the frame­work of the most sat­is­fy­ing val­ue of the UTC mod­el, that of rec­on­cil­ing tech­nolo­gies and human beings. It has exist­ed for near­ly four years and already counts some beau­ti­ful achieve­ments along­side the actors of the UTC, ” under­lines Patrick Dupin, Pres­i­dent of the UTC Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion and Deputy Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the Saint-Gob­ain Group.

Linking industry and teaching

To make the excel­lence of the stu­dents shine bright­ly and to pro­mote the research of the UTC, to accom­pa­ny the devel­op­ment of the mis­sions of pub­lic ser­vice of the high­er edu­ca­tion and par­tic­u­lar­ly that of UTC in its mis­sion of inno­va­tion are part of its flag­ship actions. “Close to the teams of the lab­o­ra­to­ries of UTC, in con­nec­tion with the stake­hold­ers and the patrons, the Foun­da­tion pro­pos­es spe­cif­ic pro­grammes in sup­port of the devel­op­ment of the UTC in the frame­work of the patron­age. These pro­grammes are devel­oped direct­ly by the Foun­da­tion or co-con­struct­ed with the project teams and the spon­sors. They are sup­port­ed by the spon­sor com­pa­nies who also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty, in the frame­work of some of these pro­grammes, to engage their employ­ees,” adds Sylvie Lemon­nier-Morel, Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the UTC Foun­da­tion for Innovation.

Working in synergy

Through these sci­en­tif­ic and aca­d­e­m­ic col­lab­o­ra­tions, the stu­dents and research staff of UTC can, thus, be actors on large-scale projects with renowned indus­tri­al­ists, such as Saint-Gob­ain Seku­rit which works in par­tic­u­lar, with­in the SITAF chair, on high qual­i­ty glaz­ings designed to pro­vide the trans­par­ent and intel­li­gent sur­faces of the future. They are con­stant­ly evolv­ing in shape, design and func­tion­al­i­ty. The Foun­da­tion also sup­ports the indus­tri­al chair in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) of trust held by CNRS researcher Sébastien Dester­cke, in part­ner­ship with Sopra Ste­ria and the Sor­bonne Cen­tre for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (SCAI). And also the Hydraulics and Mecha­tron­ics chair held by Eric Noppe, with CETIM, a patron partner.

A fund to support student entrepreneurship

The UTC Fon­da­tion, more­over, sup­ports the young grad­u­ate stu­dents entre­pre­neurs, by grant­i­ng to the best projects a help­ing hand towards the achieve­ment of their pro­to­types, of their exper­i­ments, grants of excel­lence for the cer­tain car­ri­ers who car­ry out their end-of-stud­ies project on their start­up project, in con­nec­tion with the Pepite device. Beau­ti­ful star­tups such as Ont­bo, Atmos­Gear, TechOs and Bike­spin have all ben­e­fit­ed finan­cial­ly from this. The Foun­da­tion finances spon­ta­neous projects and sup­ports stu­dent par­tic­i­pa­tion in com­pe­ti­tions, with a total of ten projects. “We have also sup­port­ed the aca­d­e­m­ic career of about 20 engi­neer­ing stu­dents with­in the frame­work of schol­ar­ships for excel­lence and inter­na­tion­al influ­ence in 2022 at British, Cana­di­an and Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, all strate­gic part­ners of UTC. In 2023, we are going to con­tin­ue to sup­port he UTC com­mu­ni­ty, to cre­ate even more inter­ac­tions between the lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tists and to increase ten­fold our means to con­tin­ue the sup­port of the inter­na­tion­al cours­es”, con­cludes Patrick Dupin. Anoth­er impor­tant issue is the exten­sion and renew­al of our fund­ing beyond the exist­ing found­ing mem­bers. We want to finance chairs and new projects, and this requires resources, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the pri­vate sector.”