TEC21 RENEWAL

In September 2018, the French government has decided to carry out a detailed appraisal of the LabEx and to renew those that would receive a positive evaluation. 114 LabEx have asked for renewal in 2018, and were evaluated by an international jury chaired by Sir Malcolm J. Grant, the current Chancellor of the University of York and the Chairman of the NHS. The jury recommended the French Government to renew its support to 103 LabEx, considering the positive impact of their action and results on scientific communities.

Since 2012, Tec21 has been working to strengthen the links between its 7 research laboratories, encourage news collaborations between researchers from the mechanical and process engineering community and foreign partners, develop new education programmes to contribute to the reputation and attractiveness of Grenoble in terms of science and research, and reinforce the connections with industrial partners and promote the applications of our research results.

With an initial budget of 6.5 M€, more than 60 PhD and post-doc projects were funded after international peer review, almost 30 visiting scientists were invited to collaborate with our researchers on new topics, 35 R&D or proof of concept internships were carried out to help setting up new industrial collaborations, and more than 40 master scholarships were awarded to students from around the world. 4 editions of the winter school on multiscale approaches and multiphysic couplings in fluid and solid mechanics were organised and have welcomed almost 100 attendees who experienced our 9 high-tech lab-courses. After the delivery of the Galilée building in the end of 2015, our collaborative research platform PEI on process engineering is now fully working with more than 10 ongoing research or R&D projects hosted, 6 startup companies installed in our premises, and an activity reaching 600 hours for the first semester this year in terms of teaching and education at the master level.

Thanks to these shared efforts, Tec21 was positively evaluated and renewed for 5 more years.

The main objectives remain the same: contributing to innovation and to key societal challenges through a deeper understanding of the complex mechanisms at play in materials, industrial processes, and natural phenomena. The perimeter has been enlarged with the entry of the MODI research group from the laboratory LIPhy, wich develops experimental multiscale approaches to study the interfacial structure and dynamics of soft matter and liquids. Besides the fundamental physical issues, their results apply to biotechnology, medicine, and energy. The integration of the MODI group gives our scientific programme a new scope of research at the nano-scale.

Our management team was also reshuffled: Alain Cartellier who has run the LabEx since its creation, has passed it over to Christian Geindreau who is now the scientific coordinator of Tec21, with Evelyne Mauret (LGP2) and Claude Verdier (LIPhy DYFCOM) as deputy coordinators. Within the work-packages, Elise Lorenceau (LIPhy MODI) has replaced Julien Bras (LGP2) to run the WP2 with Frédéric Pignon (LRP), and Sabine Rolland du Roscoat (3SR) is now running the WP4 with Giovanni Ghigliotti (LEGI).

In terms of the financing tools, two main modifications of our new programme are to be mentioned.

• The long visitor grants must now be associated with a co-funding from the visitor’s institution, corresponding to half a PhD salary.
• A new grant, i.e. “Outgoing grant”, is now available to help permanent researchers from Tec21 spend a month in a foreign university or industry and build up new collaborations.

This new version of our call for proposals was launched in October 2019, and the submitted projects are now in the evaluation process. The results should be available by mid-May.

For R&D and Proof of concept projects, the programme is still open on an ongoing basis and projects can be submitted at any time.