This week: Taiwanese links, shortlisted projects and anger at a CNRS site sale

In depth: France’s decades-long policy direction encouraging more autonomy and competitiveness in higher education has resulted in a highly differentiated university landscape in which social inequalities risk being entrenched rather than overcome, the Court of Auditors says in a report.

Full story: Competitive grant funding cements inequalities, says court

Also this week from Research Professional News

Energy agency’s IP performance recognised—CEA stakes claim as France’s leading innovation agency

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Union cries foul over sale of CNRS site

The 45 staff at the Meudon-Bellevue research site just outside Paris, run by the CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation, will have to vacate the premises by mid-March, after the CNRS board ratified the site’s sale to developer Vinci. The SNCS union for scientific researchers condemned the decision, which was voted against by the elected members of the CNRS’s board. “Nothing can justify such a decision,” the union said. The 45 staff include researchers and archivists.

ANR celebrates Taiwanese connection

The ANR, France’s national research agency, has highlighted the achievements of 15 years of collaboration with Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council. The collaboration has resulted in the funding of nearly 100 bilateral projects on a variety of topics, involving some 300 scientific partners over 15 years, it said.

AAPG projects through to shortlist stage

France’s national research agency has published the results of stage one of its 2023 AAPG general call for projects, its major funding instrument. The ANR selected 2,752 applications to go forward to stage two, the final round of selection, from a total of 6,037 applications, resulting in an overall success rate of 45.6 per cent, up on 45.3 per cent last year. In recent years, the average rate of success after stage two has been around 20 to 25 per cent.

The post France news roundup: 16-22 February appeared first on Research Professional News.

CEA stakes claim as France’s leading innovation agency

The strong performance of France’s public research organisation for energy, defence and technology in worldwide rankings for innovation has justified its robust policies on pursuing intellectual property, the agency has said.

The CEA has been included in the Top 100 Global Innovators list from Clarivate (which owns Research Professional News) for 11 consecutive years, the only French organisation to achieve such a feat.

The result is in line with the CEA’s status as France’s leading public research organisation in terms of patent applications. Statistics published in 2022 by the European Patent Office revealed that the CEA made 528 patent applications in 2021, putting it in 35th place in the EPO Patent Index 2021 and second in France, just behind the aerospace and defence group Safran (33rd overall).

Proactive approach

Corinne Hueber-Saintot, director of technology transfer at the CEA, said: “This ranking illustrates the excellence of our research and the proactive approach of our intellectual property strategy. It reinforces the attractiveness of the CEA and its visibility, and attests to the active policy of patenting our innovations, both in France and internationally.”

The agency, which also undertakes fundamental life sciences research along with its better-known activities in energy and defence, was among the top three in several fields, including chemistry, instruments, machines, apparatus and electrical energy, and measurement techniques.

The Clarivate Top 100 Global Innovators list, which ranks all companies and research organisations that have filed at least 100 patents in the past five years, also included the CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation, alongside engineering and technology companies Safran, Thales, Michelin, Airbus and STMicroelectronics.

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Court of Auditors tells government to reassert control to tackle regional disparities in higher education

France’s decades-long shift to more autonomy and competitiveness in higher education has resulted in a highly differentiated university landscape in which social inequalities risk being entrenched rather than overcome.

This is one of the findings of a report on regional differences between universities by the Court of Auditors, which conducts audits of nearly all public institutions in France.

The fragmentation of higher education in France has reached the point where “establishments sharing the name ‘university’ no longer have anything comparable with each other”, the court warned.

Competitive funding

The differentiation has been accentuated by moves to increase university autonomy and an increased reliance on what the report calls “selective funding”, which includes competitive grant funding.

Disparities in research reflect differences between universities, the report said. Some universities “conduct world-class research and orient their training towards this goal, while others provide a larger share of undergraduate education and concentrate their research efforts in a few disciplines because they cannot benefit from [so much] competitive funding.”

The reliance on selective funding has led to an increasing concentration of resources in urban centres, which risks deepening the regional and social disparities that the report analyses. Rates of participation in higher education drop outside of urban centres, the report said, while 77 per cent of 20- to 24-year-olds who are children of executive or managerial professionals have studied at university, compared with 52 per cent for more junior workers and those doing manual work.

Elite status

The report criticised the government’s creation of a new legal status of experimental public establishment (EPE) that universities can adopt. EPEs could lead to rising fees and selection by the back door, the court warned, which would exacerbate regional and social differences.

EPE status puts institutions on a path to the ‘major establishment’ status long enjoyed by elite higher education establishments outside the university system, such as some grandes écoles. It also effectively creates a university-grand école hybrid that allows institutions to alter their selection policies and registration fees. This “completes the breakdown of the unified concept of university”, the court said.

The report recommends two ways in which the government could act to address the problems it highlights. First, basing the classification of universities on objective criteria would clear up confusion and allow a more targeted approach where necessary. 

Second, it could set up a national framework for universities with tailored objectives for each, to be overseen by regional rectors. “This solution has the advantage of being able to adapt to the specificities of each institution and of being more in line with the complex reality of the university landscape,” the court said.

Defence of autonomy

In its response to the court, oversight body the High Council for Evaluation, Research and Higher Education (HCERES) said it shared the idea “that each university has its own personality and accomplishes its missions in a specific way that should be taken into account by the supervisory authorities and the partners”.

However, HCERES parted company with the court’s findings on autonomy and oversight. Rather than being subjected to greater administrative supervision, universities should enjoy greater autonomy, it said, with independent academic evaluation as the guarantor of quality.

The oversight body declared: “In the European and international university and scientific context in which it operates, HCERES cannot completely share these perspectives, which it doubts are desirable or even feasible…At a time when the publication of the new EUA [European University Association] barometer on autonomy has been announced, it is regrettable that the court—which makes very little mention of autonomy—seems to be sticking to a modernised state system rather than relying on greater responsibility for the actors involved.”

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This week: Inrae opens new labs, Retailleau speaks on Swiss question, private universities probed

In depth:  French research and higher education minister Sylvie Retailleau has warned that the under-representation of women in science has serious consequences for society at large and more work would have to be done to address it.

Full story:  Lack of women in science persists, admits Retailleau

Also this week from Research Professional News

Research minister hears anger over pensions reform—But ministry’s account of union meeting concentrates on other matters

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Inrae opens new pesticide research labs

France’s public research organisation for agriculture has inaugurated a new research centre at the University of Artois. The Agronomy and Agrifood R&D Centre of Greater Arras was opened by Inrae chair and chief executive Philippe Mauguin alongside university president Pasquale Mammone. It will house Inrae and the University’s two joint research laboratories, both of which focus on the chemical life cycle of herbicide and pesticide products.

Retailleau speaks on Swiss EU partnership

French research minister Sylvie Retailleau told Swiss newspaper Le Temps that Switzerland’s scientific research cannot be “disassociated” from other areas of EU-Swiss co-operation during her official visit that included a trip to Cern. The visit occurred against the backdrop of complaints that Swiss research was being frozen out by the EU. The Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation reported on Twitter that secretary of state Martina Hirayama had had a “constructive discussion” in her meeting with Retailleau.

France Universités calls for scrutiny of private institutions

France Universités, the group representing the presidents of France’s public universities, has asked the government to clarify issues around private, for-profit higher education. Among the concerns are nomenclature, including use of the terms university, ‘licence’ (bachelor’s degree) and ‘master’ (master’s degree) as well as accreditation. The group called for a mandatory code of practice for private institutions, as well as outposts of overseas universities.

The post France news roundup: 9-15 February appeared first on Research Professional News.

But ministry’s account of union meeting concentrates on other matters

France’s minister of higher education and research Sylvie Retailleau has met with her ministry’s Social Management Committee (SCA), which comprises representatives of staff from higher education and research institutions, for the first time.

The SCA, whose members were elected in December 2022, has now replaced the ministry’s technical committees, following the implementation of the Public Transformation Act 2019.

A summary of the meeting said Retailleau discussed the ministry’s priorities for the coming year, including a national consultation on student life, which is intended to lead to a reform of students scholarships, and changes to the training offered by higher education and research institutions including lifelong learning.

Pension reform

This account failed to mention the government’s plans for pensions reform, which have unleashed strikes and protests in France over recent weeks—many of which have been joined by researchers and university staff. But the higher education union SNPTES said its representatives “were able to remind the minister that the government plan for pension reform includes points that cannot be accepted”.

On 10 February, immediately after the meeting, the SNPTES said: “We do not need this pension reform, but instead budgetary resources to upgrade the careers and remuneration of the staff we represent!”

The ministry noted that Retailleau was committed “to a permanent and robust social dialogue within the ministry”.

It also warned of a particularly busy year ahead for the committee. With no mention the pension reform, it said the following matters would need discussion and resolution: “The finalisation of an agreement on telecommuting, the assessment and evolution of the agreement on remuneration and careers in the context of the review of the law on research programming, as well as the assessment and evolution of the management guidelines on bonuses, and staff mobility.”

A version of this article appeared in Research Europe

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French research minister highlights social consequences of inequality at science awards

Sylvie Retailleau, France’s research and higher education minister, has said that the under-representation of women in many fields of science remains an important social issue and more must be done to counter it.

Writing in the introduction of the programme for the Irène Joliot-Curie prize for women researchers, Retailleau said that efforts should increase to make scientific careers more attractive to women.

Discussing the negative impact on society due to the absence of women in some fields, she gave the example of the codification of cognitive biases in research results, algorithms and digital tools because of the predominance of male engineers and technicians.

“Today, these fields suffer from a lack of attractiveness, in general, of course, but particularly for women. We must therefore better understand the reasons for this situation, to remedy it more effectively. The under-representation of women in science and technology is a social issue whose consequences are not always fully appreciated,” she wrote.

Progress needed

At the awards, held on 10 February and attended by prime minister Élisabeth Borne, Bérengère Dubrulle, a research director at the CEA, the public research organisation for energy, defence and technology, was presented with the Woman Scientist of the Year award.

Accepting her award, Dubrulle, whose research focuses on fluid turbulence and touches on astrophysics, geophysics, mechanics and mathematics, agreed that much work still needed to be done to achieve gender equality in science.

"As far as the place of women in science is concerned, we have a long way to go! Neither Marie Curie nor Irène Joliot-Curie, although they both won a Nobel Prize, has been admitted to the Academy of Sciences. There is still progress to be made, even if the CEA and the CNRS [France’s largest public research organisation] are working to make the place of women in science much more visible," she said.

The Joliot-Curie prize was important, she said, because by highlighting women in science it encouraged girls to pursue scientific education.

“I am a good example: my vocation was inspired when I was eight years old, when I discovered pictures of Marie Curie working in a history book. We need female role models in science so that today’s girls can identify with them and embark on a scientific career,” she said.

Exemplary careers

The other prizewinners were Céline Bellard, a biodiversity researcher with the CNRS, who won the commitment award, CNRS quantum systems scientist Nina Hadis Amini, who won the young woman scientist award, and Marjorie Cavarroc-Weimer, a scientist at aerospace and military technology company Safran, who was awarded the women, research and enterprise prize for her research and her efforts to encourage girls and women into scientific careers.

Every year since 2001, the Irène Joliot-Curie prize rewards “exemplary careers in both public and private research”, with the goal of highlighting the careers of women scientists. The prizes are awarded by the ministry of higher education and research, with the support of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Technologies, whose members make up the jury.

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European Investment Bank and member states commit €3.75 billion for ‘fund of funds’

The EU’s investment bank and five of its member states have launched a new venture capital fund of funds, with initial commitments totalling €3.75 billion, to help European “technology champions” grow.

Launched on 13 February, the European Tech Champions Initiative is designed to “help plug financing gaps and thus reinforce Europe’s strategic autonomy and competitiveness”, the European Investment Bank said.

The EIB has put up €500 million for the fund of funds, which will invest in venture capital funds that in turn will invest in companies. It said it would “channel much-needed late-stage growth capital to promising European innovators” seeking to raise over €50m. The national backers are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

“Europe’s tech startups often do not have sufficient capital to compete on a global scale and are pushed to relocate overseas,” the EIB said. “Closing this scale-up gap could create a large number of highly skilled jobs and boost growth.”

According to the EIB, the fund is expected to grow with “further commitments”.

France’s industry minister Bruno Le Maire (pictured at the launch) said the initiative was “a striking example of what we can achieve collectively to strengthen the EU’s economic and industrial sovereignty”.

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This week: Covid research response questioned, European degrees move closer, France Universités considers academic freedom

In depth: The management of national digital technology research agency Inria has hit back at claims in a petition signed by staff that its focus on research has been lost because of a drive to boost innovation and a goal of supporting 100 startups per year. The ‘Save Inria’ petition, which attracted more than 500 signatures in a couple of weeks, said that “research has become a dirty word” at Inria.

Full story: Digital institute Inria is losing research focus, say staff

Also this week from Research Professional News

Cancer biocluster to be built on toxic-waste dump—Research minister launches €100 million centre as questions persist about site clearance

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Covid research response gets mixed reviews

The French research response to the Covid-19 pandemic has drawn contrasting reflections. At a 2 February symposium organised by the National Research Agency (ANR), research minister Sylvie Retailleau described the actions of the ANR as “decisive” and noted research teams’ “significant” results. However, in an editorial the following day in the newspaper Le Monde, Samuel Alizon, a researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology (CIRB), complained that his research project, like others, was held back by bureaucratic processes and administrative burdens.

Joint European degrees come closer to reality

French universities will take part in a total of nine or 10 projects to test the idea of European degrees issued jointly on a cross-border basis by cooperating institutions. Research minister Sylvie Retailleau welcomed the move, and said the ministry would provide support and expertise.

Vicherat to lead academic-freedom working group

France Universités, the association of university presidents, has appointed Mathias Vicherat, director of the Sciences Po grande école, as chair of a working group to investigate threats to academic freedom in France. Following interviews with academics and researchers, the group will make recommendations on policy measures that would strengthen academic freedom by December 2023. 

The post France news roundup: 2-8 February appeared first on Research Professional News.

But managers of French agency say recent investments “serve science”

France’s national digital technology research agency Inria has hit back at claims in a petition signed by staff, including accusations that it is poorly managed and that “‘research’ has become a dirty word” at the agency.

The Save Inria petition, launched on 24 January, has so far attracted around 600 signatures. Roughly 4,000 people work at Inria, and only people with an official Inria email address are permitted to sign the petition.

Published by the SNCS-FSU union of researchers and supported by other unions, the petition says Inria is an “institution in peril” and calls on the government to intervene.

“For months, our institute has been badly treated by its management and has suffered from dysfunctions that are totally unprecedented in their scope,” say the authors.

Startup ambitions

The petition strongly criticises the scientific direction of Inria, saying that under chief executive Bruno Sportisse, it is backing away from research to focus on areas such as building “influence”, creating startups and following government imperatives to bolster “digital sovereignty”.

Inria’s goal to produce 100 startup companies a year—a goal very much in line with president Emmanuel Macron’s charge to boost innovation—comes in for sharp criticism.

Responding to Inria’s claim that it has launched 100 startup projects over the past three years, the petition says that “many are unrelated to research undertaken at Inria and some seem without any scientific content or even of little interest for society…The additional pressure on the Inria budget of this blind support for startups is very opaque.”

Other complaints include administrative disorganisation, such as months-long delays in reimbursement of expenses. Such administrative problems, the petition says, “whether they are major or minor”, are part of a wider pattern of dysfunction for which the responsibility rests with senior management.

“Numerous internal alerts have been met with management denial. The trust between the staff and the chief executive is definitively broken. We ask our supervisory ministers to intervene to put an end to this destructive management of Inria,” it says.

Rebuttal

Inria’s management hit back in an internal memo, extracts of which were published by the specialist news website AEF Info on 2 February.

Responding to the charge that Inria could no longer “support important research themes, such as hardware architecture, software engineering, communication networks or distributed systems”, the management said: “Without a doubt, the research themes cited are recognised by the management of the institute as key.”

The management recognises that these themes “are encountering difficulties, at Inria as elsewhere”, but it said that recruitment of more scientists to work on them would help them progress.

The memo added that over recent years Inria had made “a massive and unprecedented investment in the history of the institute, in the service of science”, such as by recruiting “around 160 young permanent researchers between 2019 and 2022, compared to around 80 between 2015 and 2018”.

Responding to the claim that its energies had been diverted towards startup creation, the memo said that Inria’s direction by the government to work in that area was a recognition of the organisation’s expertise. “The target of 100 projects per year is not a ‘tickbox’ target but a signal to [encourage] a change in ambition,” the memo said.

Complaints about the focus on digital sovereignty were rejected, with the management saying that “strengthening the nation’s digital sovereignty” was in line with the organisation’s history and mission.

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Research minister launches €100m centre as questions persist on site clearance

Part of the site in the southern-Paris suburb of Villejuif allocated to a new cancer research and care biocluster will need to be cleared of 20,000 tonnes of rubbish and decontaminated before work can begin, it has been revealed.

On 4 February, the newspaper Le Monde said that a report by consultancy firm Antea Group for the regional prefecture (the regional branch of central government) had estimated that 30,200 cubic metres of rubbish had been dumped on the site—a former military base. Construction waste, old household appliances and asbestos are all present.

The waste had built up over a number of years and, in 2020, a local resident reported a serious worsening of conditions to the non-profit organisation France Nature Environnement (FNE), according to the newspaper. FNE classified the site as an “illegal dump”. Maxime Colin, a lawyer for FNE, told Le Monde that “a storage-facility operation” had existed there that had been “lucrative” for the parties involved and “clearly corresponded to a strategy” rather than being a place used ad hoc by fly-tippers.

A May 2022 report in financial newspaper Les Echos said that the town council had initiated legal action against the state to force it to clear the site, which had also previously been home to an unauthorised encampment of homeless people. In that report, the mayor of Villejuif, Pierre Garzon, described those responsible for the toxic-waste dumping as “an industrial waste mafia”.

Biocluster launch

Le Monde’s report was published the day after Sylvie Retailleau, minister for higher education and research, visited Villejuif—already the home of the Gustave Roussy Hospital (pictured), Europe’s largest specialist cancer hospital—for the official launch of the Paris-Saclay Cancer Cluster, which is planned to open in 2027.

The centre, which was awarded between €80 million and €100m in December 2022, and will be modelled on the Boston Biocluster, would build on France’s “excellent basic research, particularly in the field of oncology”, and be home to public-private partnerships, as well as retaining and attracting research talent, she said.

Partners include the Paris-Saclay University, medical research agency Inserm, cancer research centre the Curie Institute, and biotech and pharmaceutical companies including Amgen, Novartis and Sanofi.

Clearance plans

Retailleau did not mention the waste problem, nor its potential cost. Le Monde reported that Antea Group’s study estimated that the cost of waste removal alone could reach €6m.

A spokesperson for the local prefecture told Le Monde that a project manager for waste removal on the site had been appointed in December, but refused to disclose either the name of the company involved or the budget for the work, which must be completed by June 2024. As for any work to decontaminate the site, the spokesperson said they had “no information” on the subject, but that “additional studies on the state of the soil” would be carried out “once the waste has been cleared”.

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This week: AI coordinator appointed, TotalEnergies’ links to academia highlighted, Franco-German collaboration celebrated

In depth: The national healthcare research agency Inserm needs “radical change” in its systems of management and finance, France’s Court of Auditors has said. The court’s report criticises government’s inaction in allowing the development of considerable overlap with the CNRS, France’s largest research agency.

Full story: Inserm’s lack of focus ‘no longer tenable’ say auditors

Also this week from Research Professional News

Researchers join strikes against pension reform—Unions say reform bill places researchers at a particular disadvantage

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

French AI gets new coordinator

Guillaume Avrin has been appointed as France’s national coordinator for artificial intelligence. Avrin, formerly the manager for AI and robotics evaluation at LNE, the French national laboratory for metrology and testing, replaces Renaud Vedel, who left the post in mid-2022. Avrin will be responsible for overseeing AI research and development, an area of strategic importance to the French government that was allocated nearly €4 billion in the overarching France 2030 research and innovation programme.

TotalEnergies deep links to French academia highlighted

Energy company TotalEnergies is “omnipresent” in academia and research, according to a report published by environmental lobby group Greenpeace. The survey of more than 100 public research structures found 55 per cent had links with TotalEnergies, whether in terms of financing, collaboration or co-management of a research unit. Formerly known as Total, the business rebranded in 2021 to emphasise its activity outside the oil and gas sector in which it is a major player. It is the fourth largest company in France by market capitalisation. In 2022 it abandoned plans to open a new research centre in partnership with engineering school École Polytechnique on the Paris-Saclay campus.

France Universités celebrates German partnership

France Universités, the association of university presidents, has marked six decades of collaboration with its German counterpart, the German Rectors’ Conference, as well as wider Franco-German research and higher education collaboration. The organisation’s president Guillaume Gellé said “promoting knowledge for the benefit of all, and in particular our youth, is part of our common commitment and nourishes democratic values”.

The post France news roundup: 26 January to 1 February appeared first on Research Professional News.

Court of Auditors urges government to curtail French healthcare research agency’s overlapping mission with CNRS

The French national healthcare research agency Inserm needs “radical change” in its systems of management and finance, France’s Court of Auditors has said.

The court, which conducts audits of nearly all public institutions in France, made the remark in its report on the agency, published on 23 January. The report evaluates Inserm’s operation and performance between 2015 and 2021.

Strategic drift

While it acknowledged that the quality of research undertaken by Inserm was “higher than the world average”, the court said that it suffered from a lack of strategic vision. There was now significant overlap with the work of other research bodies, including the CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation and a multidisciplinary research agency.

The court laid the blame for much of this drift at the door of the government for allowing an uncoordinated research landscape to spread. “The ministry of higher education and research has not been able to deal with the fundamental problems of a strategic nature raised by the fragmentation of the institutional landscape of health research,” the report said.

Inserm should refocus on areas that are not covered by CNRS research, the court recommended. “All in all, Inserm, like the ministry of higher education and research and the ministry of health, has not been able to make the necessary decisions. Because the public authorities have failed to cut through the institutional kaleidoscope, Inserm does not have its destiny completely in hand,” it said.

Regarding Inserm’s accounts, the court found that the agency had been slow to respond to financial deficits by, for instance, revising research management fees. Overall, Inserm had not drawn up a “genuine recovery plan”, nor had its supervising ministries of research and health requested a “return to equilibrium”. The fact that Inserm came in under budget in 2020 and 2021 was not a sign of a turnaround, the report found, as it was the result of a “slowdown in activities linked to the health crisis and the recording of exceptional revenues”.

Alternative futures

Describing the situation as “no longer tenable”, the court suggested three possible futures for Inserm that could allow it to regain its focus and mission. The first was to revive the Alliance for Life Sciences and Health (Aviesan) as a funding body and attach it and its subsidiaries to Inserm, which would then be given an increased role in steering biomedical research. The second would be to merge Inserm with the CNRS Institute of Biological Sciences (INSB). And the third would be to strip Inserm of its role as a research agency entirely and transform it into a funding body.

The court also looked into the operations of Inserm Transfert, Inserm’s technology transfer subsidiary, and found that its commercialisation projects were taking too long, and that its “achievements in therapeutic and diagnostic innovations remain unsatisfactory”.

Leadership change

Responding to the audit, outgoing Inserm chief executive Gilles Bloch said that overall it “validates, to a large extent, a transformation and a dynamic already underway”. He also noted that several subsections and headings in the report were more negative and less nuanced than its overall content.

Of the three suggested futures made by the court, Bloch said he supported strengthening Inserm’s research-steering role, writing: “In fact […] this transformation has already been underway for several years through the piloting of major national plans that have been entrusted to [Inserm]”.

Of the proposed merger with the INSB, he said: “We must be allowed to doubt that such a merger would give the merged entity the agility that the Court of Justice has called for”. He rejected the court’s suggestion that Inserm cease its role as a research agency.

Bloch, who has led Inserm since 2019, did not seek a second four-year term as chief executive. He will be replaced by Didier Samuel, a senior researcher on transplantation and the former medical director of the liver transplant service at the Paul-Brousse Hospital in Paris. His appointment was approved by parliament on 26 January.

A version of this article appeared in Research Europe

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Unions say reform bill places researchers at a particular disadvantage

French academics and researchers have joined hundreds of thousands of people striking on the streets of Paris—including transport, postal and dock workers—to urge the government to abandon plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Huge crowds gathered at Place d’Italie in the south of the city on 31 January before marching to the Hôtel des Invalides close to the Eiffel Tower, while about 250 demonstrations also took place in other French cities and towns.

The trades union congress CGT estimated that 2.8 million people joined demonstrations, while the French interior ministry put the figure at just under 1.3 million. Meanwhile, an inter-union petition rejecting the reform and calling for a reduction in the retirement age to 60 has gathered more than 800,000 signatures.

Researcher concerns

Members of the National Union of Scientific Researchers (SNCS) joined the strikes. In a statement, the union said that the government reforms put researchers at a particular disadvantage. For scientific research staff, who often start working in research organisations later in their careers, “the extension of the number of years of service would severely reduce their pensions”, the statement said.

Higher education union Snesup, which also participated in the strike, complained that the reforms would have a particularly negative impact on female academics, saying that “among teacher-researchers, in 2017, women already retired with pensions that were on average 12 per cent lower than those of men”. It also issued a statement denouncing a police evacuation of a student meeting at the University of Strasbourg in the run-up to protests on 19 January.

Parliamentary passage

The strikes may be seen as a resumption of industrial action that took place in France in late 2019 and early 2020, before being halted by the coronavirus pandemic. The pre-pandemic strikes were the largest demonstrations seen in France since 1968. Commenting on the resumption of industrial action, the organisation Open University, which campaigns against poverty and precarity among higher education staff, said: “This time again, we will make them back down.” 

At present, there is no sign of that happening. President Emmanuel Macron has shown no indication that the bill for pension reform will be watered down when it begins its journey through the French parliamentary system next week. However, without a majority in either parliamentary house, Macron will have to rely on the support of the right-wing Republicans to get the bill through. 

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Country bags 12 of 90 awards, ahead of Germany and UK

Researchers at institutions in France have been awarded the most grants under the European Research Council’s latest Proof of Concept call, bagging 12 out of the 90.

The prestigious €150,000 grants, which became available again in 2022 after a hiatus the previous year, are designed to help researchers bring basic research ideas to application. They are open to researchers who have previously been awarded grants from the ERC for “frontier” research.

In the allocations announced by the ERC on 24 January, researchers in Germany won 10 awards, researchers in the UK won nine and researchers in Israel and Spain each won eight.

The allocation was one of several for the Proof of Concept scheme in 2022, bringing the total number of awards for the year to 366.

ERC president Maria Leptin said: “We need to keep investing in such research: it truly feeds commercial or social innovation. Europe needs more of it!”

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This week: a space consultation, planned strikes and advances in hydrogen technology

In depth: Luxury products company LVMH, best known for its fashion brand Louis Vuitton, has cancelled controversial plans to build a research centre close to elite engineering school École Polytechnique. Its LVMH Gaia research centre will now be built at an as-yet undisclosed location elsewhere in France, most likely within the Paris region.

Full story: Louis Vuitton scraps plans for Paris-Saclay research centre

Also this week from Research Professional News

France and Germany launch expanded research partnership—Governments renew vows with pledges of closer union in physical sciences and IT

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Government opens space consultation

France’s ministries of the economy, armed forces and research are to consult actors in the space sector on how to support innovation and ‘new space’—the rush of private businesses into orbit. The ministries say they are seeking input on potential changes to France’s existing space law, first codified in 2008.

Unions call for solidarity against pension reform

France’s higher education unions have called on members to support protests against government plans to reform pension provision, which would include raising the retirement age. Strike action is scheduled for 31 January, and the unions have urged school and university students to join protests and picket lines. The call follows nationwide strikes last week that saw widespread disruption and clashes with police.

Strong performance in hydrogen technology

France is second in Europe for innovation in hydrogen technology, according to a joint European Patent Office and International Energy Agency report. The country, which the EPO and IEA calculate is responsible for 6 per cent of all patents filed globally in the technology area, trails only Germany (11 per cent) in patents filed. The CEA, France’s nuclear and alternative energy body, was ranked first globally among institutions for the number of patents filed. “This first place reflects the commitment and excellence of our researchers in hydrogen technologies,” said Laurent Antoni, who leads the CEA’s hydrogen research programme.

The post France news roundup: 19-25 January appeared first on Research Professional News.

Governments renew vows with pledges of closer union in energy and IT

France and Germany have announced plans for a new research collaboration in the hopes of developing new low-carbon technologies.

Announced by France’s higher education and research minister Sylvie Retailleau and her German counterpart Bettina Stark-Watzinger, research will focus on energy storage and transmission “in order to contribute to the transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy”, a statement from the French government said.

Both France and Germany want to develop innovative battery technologies, the statement added, singling out improved energy density and charging speed, alongside reducing the need for the use of rare and strategically valuable metals.

Supercomputing

Existing joint Franco-German projects in other areas will also be expanded, including within ‘exascale’ supercomputing, which aims to approach levels of processing akin to the human brain. The countries say they plan to strengthen research and innovation projects and work on shared priorities within the EuroHPC supercomputing programme. 

Artificial intelligence is also on the agenda for collaboration, with the ministries announcing a second joint call for projects in a scheme that has already led to the selection of three large-scale strategic cooperation projects between French and German institutions.

Networks and investment

The ministers also said that France and Germany are working towards shoring up innovation financing via the European Innovation Council (EIC) accelerator programme, responding to recent declines in the global public and private equity markets. Projects classified as high-risk, long-term investments are to be singled out as the governments will respond to “a real need for financing disruptive innovation through grant and equity investment.”

Finally, the ministers recommitted to Eureka, the European network facilitating cross-border innovation projects, saying that both Germany and France supported the organisation’s goal of fostering multilateral cooperation between industry, research institutions and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) via research projects. “The two countries will help link Eureka to EU Framework Programmes and European Commission policies,” the ministry said.

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Luxury brand will set up elsewhere but École Polytechnique partnership to continue

Luxury products group LVMH, best known for its fashion brand Louis Vuitton, has cancelled plans to build a research centre close to elite engineering school École Polytechnique.

The proposed centre, to be known as LVMH Gaia, was to be located adjacent to the École Polytechnique campus on the Saclay campus near Paris. It was due to house up to 300 researchers working in areas such as sustainability, artificial intelligence and life sciences, with a focus on so-called “sustainable and digital luxury”.

The Saclay plan was approved by École Polytechnique’s board in November 2022 despite opposition from some staff and students, including a campaign group Polytechnique Is Not For Sale.

In an article published in the newspaper Le Monde just before the board’s decision, that group had said that “the oxymoronic challenges of ‘sustainable luxury’…appear quite derisory, even indecent, in the face of the immediate necessities of the vast majority of the population”. It pursued two legal appeals subsequent to the board’s decision to try to halt the centre’s development.

Undisclosed location

Speaking to the newspaper Le Monde, an LVMH spokesperson said the group’s decision not to go ahead with the Paris-Saclay site was not linked to the controversy. “We have found another site that perfectly matches our architectural and research project,” the spokesperson said. LVMH has not disclosed where that site is but Le Monde said it is understood to be in the Paris region.

In a statement published on 23 January, École Polytechnique said that LVMH’s decision “does not call into question the research partnership” with LVMH. “Work on sustainable materials, which is part of the project to create a new interdisciplinary materials centre, will be carried out. Exchanges on the two other identified research themes, namely data and AI, and life sciences, will also continue,” it added.

However, the decision is likely to be a major disappointment for École Polytechnique president Eric Labaye, a friend of French president Emmanuel Macron. It also represents a setback for the wider government strategy of using higher education and research clusters, of which Paris-Saclay is the largest, as the lynchpin of public-private partnerships.

Alternative future

In a statement, Polytechnique Is Not For Sale said it objected to “the exclusive position granted to LVMH on the campus and demanded that the LVMH building be built elsewhere, which would not have prevented the establishment from developing partnerships with the company. The decision announced today meets these expectations.”

Speaking to Le Monde, Thomas Vezin, secretary general of alumni association La Sphinx, said campaigners would remain mobilised to challenge future developments: “It is urgent to think collectively about another future for the available land.”

The cancellation comes a year after the abandonment of similar plans by oil and gas company Total Energies to open a research centre on the Paris-Saclay campus.

The post Louis Vuitton scraps plans for Paris-Saclay research centre appeared first on Research Professional News.

This week: a CNRS assessment committee, marine genomics funding and agriculture leadership

In depth: The French government has published details of a single online portal to handle all applications to master’s courses at universities in France. The MonMaster site, modelled on the undergraduate application portal Parcoursup, will open on 1 February. It will allow applicants to make a single deposit of files required by multiple courses, which will now follow a unified national timetable for deadlines.

Full story: Unified master’s application portal unveiled

Also this week from Research Professional News

France in 2023: sparks set to fly—President Macron’s reform programme could meet tough resistance when he tackles pensions

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Committee assessing CNRS revealed

France’s High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education has announced its international committee to assess the work of the CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation. A panel of experts from 11 countries, including people working at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in the UK and Stanford in the US, will be chaired by Martin Vetterli from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Funding for marine genome research

Research minister Sylvie Retailleau has announced that the CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation, and the CEA, the public research organisation for energy, defence and technology, are to sequence the genomes of 4,500 marine species present in French waters. The research programme, which will last eight years, will be supported by €41 million under the France 2030 investment programme.

Cirad to lead EU ‘associated cropping’ research

France’s Cirad centre for international cooperation in agricultural research for development is to coordinate the IntercropValues project funded by the EU. Some 27 organisations from 14 countries will participate in the project, which seeks to reduce the cost of associated cropping—which is when a temporary crop is grown in a compact plantation of permanent crops. “Scientifically recognised as one of the agro-ecological solutions, [associated cropping] has been largely abandoned in Europe since the advent of fertilisers in favour of monospecific crops,” said Cirad agronomist and project coordinator Eric Justes.

The post France news roundup: 12-18 January appeared first on Research Professional News.

President Macron’s reform programme could meet tough resistance when he tackles pensions

After three years of tumult brought about by global emergencies, 2023 looks set to be a calmer time for higher education and research in France. That is not to say it will actually be calm, however.

Last year also promised a return to normal as the Covid-19 pandemic—and the lockdowns and restrictions that came with it—eased. However, the cost of living crisis saw universities struggle to cope with rising heating bills, and some universities—most notably the University of Strasbourg—extended their winter breaks to cope. A feeling of teetering on the edge of a new crisis set in.

If this is held off and a return to normal does occur in 2023, the government will be hoping it will not be a revisit of the ‘normal’ of 2019, which was marked by union disputes, including in higher education and research.

Sylvie Retailleau, minister for higher education and research, certainly appears to have a less combative tone than her predecessor Frédérique Vidal, whom she replaced on 20 May 2022. On the other hand, Retailleau benefits from Vidal having successfully pushed through many of the government’s controversial reforms, including the Research Planning Law (LPR), which alongside a funding boost ushered in a raft of changes—many of them, such as the creation of junior professorships on temporary contracts, far from universally welcomed.

And yet president Emmanuel Macron has made good on his promise to raise the higher education and research budget by €1 billion each year. In fact, the budget for the ministry of higher education and research will be raised by €1.1bn in 2023, although when that spending increase was announced, the France Universités association of university leaders said it would not be enough to compensate for rising energy costs and general inflation.

Pension reform

Another significant battleground lies in wait: pensions. Having been put on hold by the Covid-19 pandemic, Macron’s plans for wide-ranging changes to France’s comparatively generous pensions allocations are back on the agenda. The last time the government attempted to push through a reform package, in late 2019, the result was widespread strike action. 

Another round of strikes in September 2022 failed to achieve much, but a wider confrontation is expected this year. Limited industrial action, including from the higher education unions Snesup-FSU and Sud Éducation, is underway this week, but the real action will come later in the year.

As he gets to work on his second—and final—term in office, Macron can say that he has already accomplished much that he promised back in 2017. He has overseen mergers within France’s fragmentary university landscape that have led to a rise in international rankings, he has yoked higher education firmly to innovation and business and, despite controversy, he has passed the LPR.

Pension reform is the one ‘modernisation’ programme he has not completed. It will logically be high on his agenda this year. Expect conflict. 

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Launch fulfils minister’s promise but critics warn of continued oversubscriptions to some courses

The French government has published details of a single online portal to handle all applications to master’s courses at universities in France.

The MonMaster site, modelled on the undergraduate application portal Parcoursup, will open on 1 February. It will allow applicants to make a single deposit of files required by multiple courses, which will now follow a unified national timetable for deadlines. Until now, candidates had to contact each master’s programme separately, as each selection process was specific and followed its own deadlines. 

Having simplified the master’s application process, the government is aiming for universities to have allocated places by the summer in order to reduce stress on applicants. In a statement, the ministry of higher education and research said that as universities would have a clearer idea of the number of registered students thanks to the new system, it should be possible to offer any remaining vacant places earlier.

Promise kept

MonMaster will replace the existing TrouverMonMaster, a site that presents the various master’s courses available. The creation of the new website will make good on a promise made by higher education and research minister Sylvie Retailleau, soon after she was appointed in 2022, to create a single, streamlined process for applications.

In 2021, prospective master’s students launched a campaign entitled Etudiants Sans Master (Students Without Master’s), demanding changes to the application process after being unable to find places on courses. Many people complained of being left on waiting lists for weeks without any information from the relevant higher education authorities.

Early criticism

In its statement, the ministry of higher education and research said the new website would improve matters through better matching between supply and demand. The statement also said that “the number of places offered in the first year of the master’s degree (185,000 in 2022) is approximately 20,000 higher than the number of bachelor’s graduates (less than 165,000 in 2021)”, which meant that oversubscriptions should be infrequent.

However, writing in the newspaper Libération, science and higher education journalist Olivier Monod cast a sceptical eye on the plans. Monod argued that Parcoursup had left many students unable to enrol and suggested that MonMaster risked running into the same problems. Monod added that many courses would continue to be oversubscribed: “Without additional resources for universities, the gap between the number of applicants and the number of positions in the most sought-after fields of study will remain too great, and the problems of orientation will remain the same.”

The adherence to a unified timetable means that the application process for the 2023-24 academic year will run from 22 March to 18 April. Institutions will examine applications between April and June, with offers being made in June and July.

A version of this article also appeared in Research Europe

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This week: a major agriculture scheme, EU defence leadership and no CentraleSupélec name change (yet)

In depth: The French government has announced funding for projects worth €340 million aimed at encouraging the creation of startups using technology that is heavily reliant on scientific advances, or ‘deep tech’. The government said that the new funding meant it has invested €500m over recent months on projects to accelerate innovation.

Full story: French startup plan moves up a gear

Also this week from Research Professional News

Tsar for open science baulks at rising processing charges—French institutions pay €30m a year to publish open access, study reveals

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Agriculture digital tech scheme launched

The government has launched a call for research projects aiming to encourage sustainable farming practices with digital technology, with the winners set to share €65 million in funding. The national digital technology research institute Inria and the agricultural research agency Inrae will oversee the scheme. In a statement, the government said it expected entries that would develop robotic farming equipment, deploy artificial intelligence in the fields, reduce the use of phytosanitary products or better understand animal and plant genetic resources.

CEA to lead European project

The CEA, France’s public research organisation for energy, defence and technology, is to lead a project supported by €49 million from the European Defence Fund to develop countermeasures against chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological threats. The four-year Counteract project will include 25 other partners from 11 countries, among them five universities and 10 public research institutes. 

Engineering school denies fait accompli on name change

CentraleSupélec, a prestigious French engineering school, has published a statement denying claims in business magazine Challenges that it has already decided to change its name to Centrale Paris-Saclay. The school acknowledged that a change of name and branding was being discussed, but it said that no final decision had been taken by the school’s board. When a decision has been made, it will be announced directly by the school, together with a plan of action, it said.

The post France news roundup: 5-11 January appeared first on Research Professional News.

French institutions pay €30 million a year to publish open access, study reveals

The French government’s coordinator on open science has expressed his alarm at a study showing that French institutions now pay €30 million annually in article-processing charges (APCs) to publishers of scholarly journals. This is a threefold increase since 2013 and is in addition to €85 million in annual subscription charges, the study found.

Marin Dacos, the research ministry’s national coordinator for open science, wrote on Twitter of the study, which was commissioned by the ministry: “It has been talked about for a long time, but rarely on the basis of reliable estimates. Now we know how much publishing costs cost for France (€30m per year!) and we have a credible estimate of trends for the next 10 years.”

Going for gold

The paper, which was written by researchers from the companies Datactivist and Pleiade Management and Consultancy, predicts that costs will continue to rise and says that the annual bill for APCs could hit €50m to €68m by 2030 if current trends continue.

The study found that the primary factor in the year-on-year rise was the growth of articles in ‘gold’ open-access journals, noting that without this growth, APC costs would have been multiplied by a factor of 1.69 instead of 3. Journals ranked as gold publish all of their content on an open-access basis under a Creative Commons licence, but they are entitled to charge an APC payable by the author, institution or funding body.

In recent years, French institutions have increasingly committed to open-access publishing. Last week, the BRGM, France’s geological service, published a new open-science plan committing to opening up the results of its research activities “as much as possible”, while in December the IRD, a research centre for development, said it would prioritise ‘diamond’ open-access journals that impose no fees whatsoever, either for readers or researchers.

In July 2021, the research ministry published its Second National Plan for Open Science, which runs until 2024. Among its provisions are a stipulation that all articles and books resulting from publicly funded calls for proposals should be published on an open-access basis, and a commitment to provide support to diamond open-access economic publishing models that do not require the payment of any article or processing charges.

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Additional funding brings recent innovation investments up to €500 million

The French government has said it will support a variety of projects worth €340 million aimed at encouraging the creation of startups using technology that is heavily reliant on scientific advances, or ‘deeptech’.

These investments, combined with the announcement in December 2022 of €160m in funding for regional innovation centres which also aim to boost tech transfer and startup creation, mean the government has invested €500m over recent months on projects to accelerate innovation, it said in a statement.

Innovation reflex

The €340m investment would happen via two routes. First, €65m would be added to already established funding tech-transfer mechanisms, including i-lab and French Tech grants. Second, the government would fund 17 projects via the priority research and equipment programme (PEPR) that would increase targeted support for technology development. The government did not release details of the winning projects but said they would work closely with local actors and provide support on patents and regulatory issues that would “take into account the specificities of each sector”.

A statement announcing the investments said that France’s ambition in innovation meant it now needed to “shift up a gear”. It reiterated the government’s goal to have 100 French ‘unicorn’ businesses in existence by 2030 and the creation of 500 startups per year. It added that the intermediary goal of 25 unicorns had been met in 2022, while 250 deeptech startups were created.

However, the statement added that much more work was required. “The reflex for innovation after each scientific discovery is not yet ubiquitous,” it said, while adding that these investments would help to make it so.

Young entrepreneurs

On 9 January, Sylvie Retailleau, minister for research and higher education, and Roland Lescure, junior minister for industry, visited the University of Lorraine to discuss the investments.

Retailleau said the funding was necessary to ensure France was ready to face the challenges of tomorrow. “When you think about the challenges of climate change, biodiversity, energy-saving technology such as quantum computing, or providing solutions in health involving artificial intelligence, you think about the importance of the digital ecosystem. Yes, I think we need to bring out even more of knowledge and discoveries—all the potential that we have in our laboratories,” she said, speaking on local television channel Moselle TV.

Retailleau also spoke positively of a University of Lorraine student entrepreneurship initiative, saying it was an example of how to develop links from academia to the commercial sector by allowing students “from the first cycle [undergraduate level] to the doctorate to be ready and better trained to create startups”.

All the funding for deeptech and startup creation is via the France 2030 programme, which has a total budget of €54 billion to be distributed to universities, public laboratories and private businesses, to support projects from fundamental research to commercialisation.

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This week: new Academy of Sciences intake, food banks for students and Strasbourg goes green

In depth: France’s top bodies for university leaders and renewable energy have started the year under new management, with Guillaume Gellé, president of the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, taking the helm of France Universités, and Boris Ravignon, a politician from the Ardennes area in eastern France, appointed president of Ademe.

Full story:  New year brings new leaders for France Universités and Ademe

Also this week from Research Professional News

France to launch eco-research scheme for overseas territories—Scientists to monitor threats to fragile terrestrial and marine environments

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Academy of Sciences bolsters its ranks

The Academy of Sciences has announced the election of 18 new members. The new additions to France’s apex learned society for the natural and physical sciences include French-British epigenetics specialist Edith Heard and astronomer Guy Perrin. They join the academy’s 286 existing members, 120 foreign associates and 63 correspondents, following the publication of a presidential decree.

Government promotes student food banks

The government has suggested students struggling with the cost of living should turn to a charity which picks up unwanted and unsold food from supermarkets and distributes it to those in need. The Linkee charity has received funding from the government to allow it to distribute 1,000 extra food parcels each week. In a statement, the government said the energy crisis had necessitated such a measure but its objective was “to resolve the question of student precariousness in the long term, in particular through consultation and dialogue on student life aimed at reforming scholarships and bursaries”.

Strasbourg seeks greener pastures

The University of Strasbourg, which provoked debate within higher education by announcing it would close its premises for two weeks this winter and effectively reduce term time by a week, has launched a renewed sustainability plan. The university said the plan, which includes a heightened commitment to training, would ensure that sustainability issues would be considered in every administrative decision in the future. The winter closure was mostly justified on the grounds of energy prices but also by the need to reduce emissions.

The post France news roundup: 15 December to 4 January appeared first on Research Professional News.

Scientists will get €15 million to monitor threats to fragile terrestrial and marine environments

An environmental research programme will be launched in France’s overseas territories in 2023, the country’s government has announced.

The programme will be funded by €15 million as part of the France 2030 investment plan and overseen by the Institute for Development Research.

The government said it had decided to create the programme because Overseas France—13 French-administered territories outside Europe—is particularly exposed to threats from the climate and ecological crises.

It did not specify which geographical locations will be involved but indicated it will include a range of terrestrial, coastal and marine environments, and address unsustainable agricultural, forestry and aquaculture practices.

Observatories

The programme will involve the creation of observatories to monitor pollution in terrestrial and coastal environments and fresh water. There will also be a human health component to the research.

“The research teams mobilised will study the effects on ecosystems and the health of populations, but also the social imbalances caused and the potential for restoring polluted environments. They will also propose methods to act at the source of exposure to pollutants,” the government said.

The programme was announced by Sylvie Retailleau, minister for higher education and research, during a visit to French Guiana on 15 December. Retailleau said it would supplement environmental research efforts already ongoing in Overseas France and not replace them. 

The post France to launch eco-research scheme for overseas territories appeared first on Research Professional News.

Apex higher education organisation promises research focus as renewable energy agency also gets new head

France’s top bodies for university leaders and renewable energy have started the year under new management.

France Universités, the association of university presidents, elected Guillaume Gellé (above left), head of the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, as its president in its annual shake-up of its board last month.

Also, in late December, the renewable energy agency Ademe unveiled a new leader in Boris Ravignon (above right), a politician from the Ardennes area in eastern France. Ravignon was vice-president of the Grand Est region until moving at the start of 2023 to head Ademe, which is part overseen by the ministry for higher education and research. It was allocated a budget of €836 million in 2022.

Universités focus on research

Gellé, a professor of signal processing, takes over from the previous France Universités president Manuel Tunon de Lara. His vice-presidents will be Virginie Dupont, president of Southern Brittany University, and Dean Lewis, president of the University of Bordeaux.

The new leadership team said they would have two priorities during their time in charge of the organisation. First, they would act to further raise the awareness of the importance of higher education, research and innovation at all levels of French society. Second, they would work to that “public policies are more robustly supported by research”.

For this, the trio claimed, greater investment in higher education is essential. They said: “The country must invest more in its universities: this is an essential element of our collective success and, for our establishments, of success in their missions related to training, research and innovation, but also economic development and supporting changes in ecological, social and technological matters.”

The relationship between France Universités and the government has grown more amicable under president Emmanuel Macron than it was under his predecessor François Hollande. The presidents have largely supported Macron’s programme of reform encouraging university mergers and greater engagement with the private sector, and have been rewarded with spending uplifts.

The budget for the ministry of higher education and research will be raised by €1.1 billion in 2023 although when that spending increase was announced, France Universités said it would not be enough to compensate for rising energy costs.

Ademe’s political links

Ravignon takes over from Arnaud Leroy as president of Ademe. Leroy, a former manager at the European Maritime Safety Agency, and then member of parliament representing French people living abroad, had been in the role since 2018.

The head of Ademe is appointed by the government and both men have connections to Macron.

Ravignon, a member of the centre-right Republicans party, worked with the now president at the General Inspectorate of Finance in 2004-05, before going on to work with the former president Nicolas Sarkozy while he was minister of the interior.

Leroy was involved in Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign.

In a statement, Ravignon said: “I am very proud and honoured to put my energy at the service of the projects undertaken by Ademe to support more and more actors rising to the challenges of climate change and the preservation of resources.”

A version of this article appeared in Research Europe

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This week: research ministry social committee elections, Inserm’s new recruits, space safety funding

In depth: Following an initial pilot round, the French government has launched a €160 million competition for 20 regional innovation centres to spur startups, as well as and novel products and services.

Full story: France to launch 20 university innovation clusters

Also this week from Research Professional News

Research ministry holds awards show for EU-funding winners—Researchers from University of Montpellier and École Normale Supérieure among ‘Stars of Europe’

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

Low turnout for ministry social committee elections

Elections for France’s higher education and research Social Management Committee (CSA)—a government forum for negotiating pay and conditions—have been marred by a significantly low turnout, with only 19 per cent of eligible staff voting, down from 31 per cent in 2018. The FSU education union said the ministry carried “a heavy responsibility” for the low turnout, having made the voting process difficult. Unsa-Education, a collaboration between the French unions Unsa and SNPTES, finished top in the elections. It won four seats on the 15-seat CSA, with the CGT and FSU both winning three each. Unsa-Education lost one seat compared with its previous showing in 2018, while the FSU picked up an extra seat.

Inserm launches 2023 recruitment drive

Inserm, France’s public research organisation for medical research, has said it expects to recruit 67 research fellows next year. The announcement of the ‘normal grade’ (CRCN) positions is in line with previous years and subject to final approval from government. The deadline for applications is 13 January. 

Five projects win ‘space safety’ funding 

Five projects have been awarded funding to develop technologies to avoid orbital collisions. Announced by France’s ministries of research, the economy and the armed forces, the five projects—two based in the Paris region and three in the south of France—will be funded via the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES). The government said they would “significantly increase the safety of space operations through data collection”, according to the ministries.

The post France news roundup: 8-14 December appeared first on Research Professional News.

Researchers from University of Montpellier and École Normale Supérieure among France's ‘stars of Europe’

A dozen EU-funded research projects have been recognised at the ministry of research’s Stars of Europe awards, during a ceremony held at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris on 6 December.

Established to boost the profile of EU-funded research in France and encourage more France-based researchers to apply to EU schemes, the awards are open to EU-funded research projects led by a French institution. 

This year’s winners include teams from the National Digital Technology Research Institute (Inria), the public medical research organisation Inserm and two teams from the CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation.

The jury awarded special prizes to two projects: Glopack, an environmental packaging project led by Valérie Guillard from the University of Montpellier, and Prometheus, a post-quantum computing cryptography project led by Sébastien Canard, Benoît Libert and Octavie Paris at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon.

Future-oriented

Now in their 10th year, the awards, administered by the ministry of higher education and research under Horizon Europe, were judged by a jury headed by Manuel Tunon de Lara, the outgoing president of France Universités, the association representing French university presidents.

Criteria for selection comprised scientific quality and an international dimension, but the jury also considered the economic, industrial and societal benefits generated, as well as wide dissemination of results and the inclusivity of the project—in particular for women and young researchers.

France Universités said the awards scheme was an “encouragement” to all French researchers to participate in the Horizon Europe framework programme.

Speaking at the event, higher education and research minister Sylvie Retailleau said the future of French research was closely linked to the future of the EU. “There will be no French research without European research, but make no mistake: European research does not mean the end of strong French research,” she said.

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Clusters will share €160 million to boost tech transfer and startup creation

The French government has launched a €160 million competition for 20 regional innovation centres—known as PUIs. These unite universities and public bodies with private companies to spur startups, as well as novel products and services.

The PUI competition was launched after a pilot scheme that awarded five one-year pilot PUI contracts, funded with a total of €9.5m.

Funded as part of the government’s France 2030 science programme, the PUIs see universities collaborate with local public technology transfer acceleration organisations and startup incubators, as well as research institutes and hospitals. 

The government said the clusters would contribute to its goal of creating 500 ‘deep tech’ startups—those heavily reliant on scientific advances—per year by 2030. 

PUIs funded in the pilot round were led by the University of Normandie, Sorbonne University, the University of Clermont-Auvergne, the University of Montpellier and the University of Strasbourg. 

They were initially due to be followed by a call for 15 clusters, but the scheme was expanded with a call for proposals in which 20 PUIs can win funding. The National Research Agency (ANR) will run the scheme and applicants must submit outline applications by 20 January 2023.

Industrial sovereignty

Minister for the economy Bruno Le Maire said the goal was to strengthen the link between research and business creation, which was “an essential issue for our industrial sovereignty”.

He added that “the concrete objective of this strengthened collaboration is to increase the number of patent applications and the creation of new deep tech companies. As 40 per cent of deep tech projects have an industrial vocation, these startups are therefore of prime importance for the reindustrialisation of our country”.

Each PUI will agree to assessment against indicators that will include the filing of patents and the founding of startups.

Minister for higher education and research Sylvie Retailleau said: “With the PUI, the government wants public establishments and their partners to have the means to fully exploit the innovation potential of research from their territory.”

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This week: CNRS sets up battery labs, quantum computing spin-out, post-quantum messaging

In depth: A group of universities, research institutions, pharmaceutical companies and hospitals in the southern Paris suburb of Villejuif will receive between €80 million and €100m over the next decade to create an interlinked cancer research and care biocluster.

Full story: France’s first biocluster to tackle cancer

Also this week from Research Professional News

Architecture schools call for ‘massive investment’ to meet green targets—France needs more architects to tackle environmental crisis, say directors

Here is the rest of the French news this week…

CNRS launches pair of battery labs

The CNRS, France’s largest public research organisation, has announced two new research partnerships with solid-state battery company Blue Solutions, focused on developing battery technology for the automotive sector. The Li2 and IMNBlue Lab laboratory will respectively involve the Grenoble Institute of Technology and Nantes University’s Jean Rouxel Institute of Materials, alongside the CNRS and Blue Solutions. Announcing the partnerships, CNRS chairman and chief executive Antoine Petit said the organisation aimed to grow the number of public-private partnership labs it supports from around 225 today to over 400 within four years.

CNRS and CEA make quantum leap

The CNRS and the CEA, France’s public research organisation for energy, defence and technology, have launched a spin-out company called Siquance, which has the goal of developing and marketing a silicon-based quantum computer. Based in Grenoble, the company plans to establish two public-private partnership laboratories in conjunction with both its founder organisations.

France sends its first ‘post-quantum’ message

France’s embassy in the United States sent a diplomatic cable it says was encrypted by post-quantum technology. Noting that the development of quantum computers is expected to render traditional cryptography useless, the research ministry said the experimental message prefigured a 2023 action plan and timetable for migration to post-quantum cryptography.

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