To encourage and initiate new research and innovation collaborations between research units and companies, the PUI (“Pôle Universitaire d’Innovation” – innovation university division) is setting up a new scheme to fund final-year masters’ and engineers’ internships, in conjunction with the GRAEL (Graduate Research And Education in Lille) project and the University of Lille’s graduate programmes, as well as for other master’s courses.
This scheme is already up and running, with the aim of increasing the number of doctoral students in companies through public-private doctoral contracts, in particular CIFRE (“Conventions Industrielles de Formation par la Recherche” – Industrial research training agreements), in line with the national mission launched on 17 November on the recognition of doctorates in business and society.
Researchers and teacher-researchers can receive funding to offer research internships to students in their second or final year of engineering school. As part of the research team, the trainee will work closely with the company on the preliminary research phase (state of the art, initial work to remove scientific and technological barriers, project feasibility tests, preparation of the research topic for the future thesis, etc.). At the end of the internship, if the doctoral project is approved and if the players involved in the project agree, the PUI will support you in your efforts to continue the collaboration, in particular through a CIFRE-type doctoral contract.
The internship lasts 5 to 6 months and is open to Masters 2 students or students in their final year of a PUI engineering school. The target companies are start-ups, VSEs, SMEs and ETIs (intermediate companies with fewer than 5,000 employees).