UTeam, a val­ori­sa­tion sub­sidiary 100% owned by UTC-Com­pieg­ne, is the gate­way to access the com­pe­tences and the means of UTC. It is the result of the will of the pro­fes­sors-researcher sci­en­tists to favour applied research, inno­va­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the industry. 

Cre­at­ed in 1987, UTeam has the sta­tus of a PLC (pub­lic lim­it­ed com­pa­ny) with a Man­age­ment Board and a Super­vi­so­ry Board, and is a sub­sidiary of UTC for the man­age­ment of its part­ner­ship research. UTeam was cre­at­ed to offer com­pa­nies of all sizes, from large groups to start-ups, the skills of its net­work of experts com­posed of UTC pro­fes­sors-research sci­en­tists, exter­nal con­sul­tants and engi­neers, thus cov­er­ing many sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal fields. «UTeam offers spe­cif­ic sup­port for its clients, project hold­ers or com­pa­ny founders. This ranges from activ­i­ty sup­port to train­ing, includ­ing research, engi­neer­ing, con­sult­ing, audit­ing and edu­ca­tion­al projects. Our mis­sion, through an agree­ment with the UTC, is to con­tribute to the pro­mo­tion of the know-how of the units and lab­o­ra­to­ries of the research cen­tre, the tech­no­log­i­cal plat­forms and the inno­va­tion cen­tre, through the devel­op­ment of the part­ner­ship activ­i­ty, and thus to con­tribute to the enhance­ment of the image and the rep­u­ta­tion of the UTC,» explains Samuel Veillerette, a for­mer devel­op­ment offi­cer on a CNRS con­tract for the UTC-Heudi­asyc lab­o­ra­to­ry, who became the third Pres­i­dent of the Board of direc­tors of the UTeam com­pa­ny in 2015 at the age of 32.

UTeam, the commercial arm of the UTC ecosystem

The com­pa­ny relies on a team of about ten per­ma­nent employ­ees to assist about a hun­dred con­sul­tants per year in the set­ting up and man­age­ment of busi­ness deals from a legal, admin­is­tra­tive and finan­cial point of view. UTeam han­dles an aver­age of 300 projects per year with a turnover of €3.5 million.

«To sum up, UTeam is the com­mer­cial arm of UTC. We offer dif­fer­ent types of con­tracts such as research col­lab­o­ra­tions (Cifre the­ses, for exam­ple), research or ser­vices, or edu­ca­tion­al projects (includ­ing project work­shops). The ped­a­gog­i­cal con­tracts are par­tic­u­lar­ly appre­ci­at­ed by the com­pa­nies, but also by town halls, the pub­lic author­i­ties and the min­istries, because they allow the UTC’s part­ners to become famil­iar with the the­mat­ic and organ­i­sa­tion­al diver­si­ty of the UTC, too often ignored, before set­ting up more ambi­tious research or inno­va­tion pro­grammes», indi­cates Samuel Veillerette, him­self a grad­u­ate from UTC in 2007.

UTeam set up an engi­neer­ing clus­ter in 2016 in order to extend the ecosystem’s and lab­o­ra­to­ries’ offer in terms of devel­op­ment and pro­to­typ­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the dig­i­tal field. The UTeam engi­neer­ing divi­sion is thus con­duct­ing IT devel­op­ments around the first French quan­tum com­put­er devel­oped by the start-up Pasqal. UTeam was also behind the struc­tur­ing of the nation­al net­work of sub­sidiaries and relat­ed struc­tures, «RENAFI», which organ­is­es meet­ings sev­er­al times a year to dis­cuss their prac­tices, as well as with the French Min­istry of High­er Edu­ca­tion, Research and Innovation.

UTeam is work­ing on sev­er­al devel­op­ment axes such as the enlarge­ment of its offers, the devel­op­ment of ter­ri­to­ri­al­ized the­mat­ic aggre­gates of the Oise met­ro­pol­i­tan pole, or the cre­ation of a restau­rant for the lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tists, the con­sul­tants and the part­ners on the UTC campus.

PROJECT WORKSHOPS ANCHORED IN THE TERRITORY

Among the numer­ous Project Work­shops man­aged by UTeam, on behalf of the UTC, is the one of the Com­piègne sta­tion area with the ARC (Greater Com­pieg­ne). Sev­er­al UTC stu­dents worked in 2019 on a set of issues and inno­va­tions in the field of dig­i­tal (smart cities, smart urban dis­tricts and build­ing), envi­ron­ment (bio­di­ver­si­ty, nat­ur­al risks, nui­sances) and socio-econ­o­my (cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, mobil­i­ty…); fields that should be artic­u­lat­ed with­in the frame­work of the future mul­ti­modal exchange hub and in par­tic­u­lar the ren­o­va­tion of the Com­piègne rail­way sta­tion, accord­ing to an inte­grat­ed approach of devel­op­ment and mobility.

Six months of work with two groups of about fif­teen stu­dents each, super­vised by sev­er­al lec­tur­er-research sci­en­tists of UTC, led to the cre­ation of three sce­nar­ios for the devel­op­ment of the future eco-dis­trict of the sta­tion. «This Project Work­shop was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to par­tic­i­pate in a devel­op­ment project aim­ing to build the future of an econeigh­bour­hood by imag­in­ing and study­ing the con­straints and fea­si­bil­i­ty. It was a rich work in acquir­ing knowhow and skills. The inte­gra­tion of feed­back from the con­sul­ta­tion with the cit­i­zens allowed us to sup­port the anchor­ing of our pro­pos­als on the ground, by select­ing the most rel­e­vant inno­va­tions for the Com­piègne ter­ri­to­ry», the stu­dents stat­ed in their report.