The integration of new research teams from the UMET and UCCS following the integration of ENSCL into Centrale Lille and the feedback from the latest HCERES evaluation provide Centrale Lille with the opportunity to change its scientific policy, which was initially voted in 2017.
The Research Steering Committee (RSC) is currently working on a new version of the scientific policy, which will be presented to the Scientific Council on November 29.
The objective is to build on the strengths of our institution, our diversity, our multidisciplinary aspect, and our international outlook in order to strengthen not only our collective capacity to innovate and produce new knowledge, but also the positioning and recognition of our institution on the national and international scene. The new policy is based on the activities and research programmes of the seven research units of which Centrale Lille is the supervisor (CRIStAL, IEMN, LMFL, L2EP, LaMCUBE, UCCS and UMET) and on the identification of potential for development in promising fields that can be linked to them. It aims to support emerging fields, innovative projects and centres of excellence that set us apart.
Research around 4 cross-cutting themes with societal dimensions:
Energy, Digital, Health, Environment
- ENERGY
Energy is at the heart of the major sustainable development issues currently facing society. Meeting the needs of a growing population while considering environmental concerns (pollution, climate change, reduction of CO2 emissions) is the challenge of the energy transition.
Thus, with the objective of reducing carbon emissions, research activities in this field are part of the transformation of the energy system with the challenges of mass production of low-carbon energy, improving energy efficiency and taking into account the constraints of sustainability and energy security.
- DIGITAL
Digital technology has become a cross-cutting dimension underlying all current societal challenges. It accompanies the evolution of our health system, our daily life, and disrupts our way of working, communicating, producing, and creating.
Looking towards the future of information and communication sciences and technologies, the research activities carried out in this field are intended to be at the heart of digital developments at the service of human beings and other major issues such as climate change, the energy transition, health, the cities of the future, mobility and transport, and industry 4.0. The work and research innovations coming out of the laboratories in micro-nanotechnologies, computer science, automatic control, signal and image processing, and robotics are essential to understand the world of tomorrow.
- HEALTH
The extension of life expectancy and the resulting increase in pathologies and dependency problems, the increasingly marked correlation between social/environmental conditions and the health situation, which is particularly poor in our Hauts-de-France region, the need to anticipate inevitable future pandemics, and the evolution of approaches towards more prevention, care and personalised monitoring with more transparent integration into daily life, make health and well-being one of the major societal challenges of the coming decades.
Centrale Lille aims to contribute to meeting the challenges of this issue by deploying highly interdisciplinary fundamental and technological research in engineering for health. More specifically, this will address medical devices for early and predictive diagnosis accessible to the greatest number of people, minimally invasive personalized implants and therapies, and solutions for optimizing hospital logistics and accompanying healthcare to the home.
- ENVIRONMENT
Today human and industrial activities must integrate, in their necessary evolution and development, numerous environmental issues related to climate change, the rarefaction or degradation of resources, the long-term pollution of our planet or the preservation of human health. This leads to a paradigm shift in which humans and their environment are placed at the centre of the innovation process. The question today is no longer how to produce ‘more’ but how to produce ‘better’ by reducing the impact of sectors such as chemicals, transport, construction, or energy on the environment.
Research activities in this field are positioned at the heart of this environmental transition around three axes: the development of alternative resources (bioeconomy, circular economy, recycling), the development of cleaner and more sober processes and machines (hybrid catalysis, electric machines) and finally the human environment (air quality, reduction of noise emissions, fire safety).