Building on their long-standing collaboration in joint laboratories, co-accredited master’s programmes and doctoral schools, the four schools Centrale Lyon, ENTPE, INSA Lyon and Mines Saint-Etienne established on November 23, 2022 the Lyon Saint-Etienne Engineering College with the aim of strengthening their synergies in research, education, innovation, technology transfer, entrepreneurship and knowledge dissemination.
Building on this engineering momentum at the Lyon-Saint-Etienne site, the E@sely project was developed in response to wave 3 of the “Excellence in All Its Forms” call for projects and submitted on January 12, 2023. It brings together the members of the Lyon-Saint-Etienne Engineering College as well as Jean Monnet University and four research organizations: CNRS, IFPEN, INRIA and INRAE.
This joint initiative is developed around three major societal challenges: a decarbonized industry and society, the circular economy and a responsible digital society.
The role of engineering is fundamental and decisive in addressing the challenges of energy, ecological, environmental and digital transitions. The E@SELY project proposes to contribute, through education and research, to the process of global societal transformation.
Bringing together the expertise of the partners, E@SELY is based on multidisciplinary thematic programmes, such as: “Energy, networks and energy efficiency”, “Transport systems and mobility”, or “Data and artificial intelligence: from production to governance in a responsible and sustainable approach”.
In this context, the E@SELY project encourages multidisciplinarity in the following actions:
– clusters of doctoral theses on the same societal challenge to support cross-fertilization in the search for the most comprehensive technical and human solutions possible;
– “dual-competency” doctorates, of the major/minor type, with dual supervision, to foster the emergence of new types of researchers;
– cross-disciplinary master’s programmes on societal challenges to diversify the educational offering on transitions;
– a technological campus La Forge-E@SELY, a collaborative workspace for students, incubating startups and experts to support innovation in a productive process;
– a partnership innovation hub E@SELY-Hub, operated by the Carnot Institute Ingénierie@Lyon to encourage collaboration among multiple academic stakeholders with one or more companies, on issues at the interface of different fields.
To address the complexity of societal challenges and encourage hybridization with other disciplines, the actions carried out by the project are open to other academic members of the site, associate members of the project: Lyon 1, Lyon 2, Lyon 3 and Gustave Eiffel universities, ENS Lyon, Sciences Po Lyon, CPE, ENSA Lyon, ENSSIB and VetAgroSup.
Socio-economic partners—businesses, professional sectors, local authorities—are also strongly involved in the various tools developed by the project, particularly the technological campus La Forge-E@SELY and the partnership innovation hub E@SELY-Hub.
Finally, to act as closely as possible to the needs of the territory, E@SELY’s governance will be expanded to include the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, and the two metropolitan areas of Lyon and Saint-Etienne. By involving all these stakeholders, the E@SELY project contributes to the visibility and recognition of engineering at the Lyon-Saint-Etienne site. Engineering students in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region represent 10% of students and the four schools of the Engineering College train more than 11,000 learners each year, including over 10,000 engineering students. They also have more than 1,100 doctoral students and 1,300 teaching and research staff
