Institutes
The ambition of the Sorbonne University Alliance Global Health Institute (ASU-GHI) is to improve access to care, prevention and equity in health through a systemic and participatory approach integrating the study of biological, environmental and psychosocial determinants of health.
To achieve this, ASU-GHI brings together the complementary expertise of members of the three faculties of Sorbonne University, the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Insead, Inserm, CNRS and the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, in association with numerous European and international research institutions, the fruit of the Alliance's international partnerships.
ASU-GHI's identity is based on a common foundation and purpose: access to healthcare, and on the identification of the Alliance's areas of excellence in global health:
- Santé et Environnement
- Autonomie, Vieillissement, Vulnérabilité
- Cancer
- Nutrition
These areas of excellence are all viewed through the perspectives of biomedical humanities, health economics, digital health and technologies.
The Institute will aim to promote innovative transdisciplinary research by facilitating collaboration between researchers from the Alliance and relevant partner institutions, to support the production of original knowledge with potential practical applications, to encourage the development of new training courses in research areas of interest, and to communicate about the health needs of populations in order to support decision-making and the development of global public health policies.
- Director : Juan Fernando Ramirez
Directors and Deputy Directors: Jean-Michel Oppert, Cécilia Bognon-Küss, Françoise Guillo-Benarous, Anne-Lise Paradis, Fabrice Carat, Claire Rossi, Timothy Van-Zant
- ASU-GHI Institute website
- Interview with members of the Management Committee
The Antiquity Sciences Initiative (ISAntiq) becomes the Institut des Sciences de l'Antiquité. Its ambition is to :
- Broaden the community of antiquarians to include all members of the Sorbonne University Alliance, with a view to multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary openness.
2. Improve the visibility of the existing training offer, while decompartmentalizing traditional courses.
3. Enhance the employability of our students.
4. Internationalize our courses.
The Institute's activities are based on the transformative potential of new technologies applied to philological and archaeological sources. By highlighting the exchanges between peoples, the dynamics of interaction and multilingualism in ancient civilizations, the Institute promotes an open and inclusive vision of antiquity, aimed at fostering a broader political and social dialogue on the relationship between linguistic diversity and cultural identities.
- Director: Alessandro Garcea
- Assistant Directors: Alexandre Farnoux, Didier Marcotte, Caroline Michel D'Annoville, Carole Roche-Hawley, Giulia Scalas
Overview:
The Quantum Information Center Sorbonne (QICS) aims to coordinate research, teaching and outreach efforts within the Sorbonne University Alliance on quantum information - quantum computing and communications - and its impact on other fields. It brings together a broad community ranging from computer science and physics to mathematics and the humanities.
The general objectives of the center can be summarized as follows:
- Promote excellence in research and collaborative work within the Sorbonne University Alliance
- Develop a coherent teaching program, from undergraduate to doctoral studies and continuing education.
- Raising public awareness, opening up to other scientific fields and industry.
Challenges and impacts:
Born in the 1980s, quantum information has demonstrated that basing computers and communications on quantum physics could dramatically improve their performance and achieve results previously thought impossible. Many industries around the world could benefit from quantum information; as a result, a race for research, innovation and talent has begun.
Cross-disciplinary dimension:
QICS draws on the unique body of knowledge and skills existing within the Sorbonne University Alliance, from fundamental computer science to quantum physics, from experimental demonstrations of quantum advantage to the social, economic and philosophical sciences of digital technologies. QICS aims to intensify interactions between experimental and theoretical research and engineering, while exploring the societal implications of this new way of processing information. It also aims to increase teaching efforts in this field, raise awareness among our partners and collaborate with industry within innovation ecosystems.
Scientific themes:
- Development of hardware and software for quantum computing and simulation
- Development of hardware and software for quantum communications
- Theoretical study of the foundations of quantum advantage
Impact of quantum information in other fields, from classical cryptography to human sciences and economic implications.
- Director: Valentina Parigi
- Deputy Director: Frédéric Grossehans
The Collegium Musicæ is a multi-disciplinary institute that brings together musicians, researchers and academic researchers from a wide range of backgrounds and expertise, united around the theme of music as a multifaceted object.
Relying in particular on a dozen institutions, the institute brings together all the knowledge and skills on music within the scope of the Sorbonne University Alliance, in the service of a cross-disciplinary approach to this discipline. It promotes synergies between research, musical creation, training, heritage and musical practice.
The range of disciplines brought together - musicology, acoustics, history, cognitive sciences, computer science and digital technologies, biomechanics, etc. - enables the Collegium Musicæ to offer a comprehensive range of services. The insitutute carries out wide-ranging projects, underpinned by five program axes:
- Improvisation, Learning, Artificial Intelligence
- Yesterday's instrument for tomorrow's instrument
- Non-dedicated music production venues
- Music and medicine
- Building musical knowledge
The Collegium Musicæ will award doctoral contracts to encourage new scientific collaborations, including between institutes and initiatives of the Sorbonne University Alliance. They will underpin interdisciplinary research projects between the humanities, the exact sciences and medicine, in one of the five program areas listed above. Supported by two co-directors from two different research units of the Sorbonne University Alliance, or from an external laboratory if necessary, these doctoral contracts will expand the existing community of doctoral students within the ASU “Music and Science” doctoral program. They will also contribute to the scientific life of the institute (study days, colloquia, seminars, international summer schools, etc.).
- Director: Théodora Psychoyou
- Deputy Director: Jean-Loïc Le Carrou
An interdisciplinary institute to meet the major scientific, industrial and societal challenges of materials science.
Materials are at the heart of important sectors of the economy and are omnipresent in society. Sorbonne University's Institute of Materials Science fosters innovation, interdisciplinarity and fundamental and applied research in materials science to help meet major societal and economic challenges.
The Sorbonne University Alliance brings together major players in the materials field. The Institute's mission is to strengthen their collaboration by supporting ambitious research projects, promoting new interdisciplinary training initiatives and developing international exchanges with academia and industry, thus actively contributing to the Alliance's international reputation.
The Institute's scope covers current and future research in materials science, at the interface of several disciplines: chemistry, physics, earth sciences, heritage and engineering. In the field of energy and sustainable development, topics may include energy production and storage, or the life cycle of materials. Bio-assisted synthesis, optimized or targeted for specific properties, and surface functionalization are examples relevant to the industrial and healthcare fields. The institute is also interested in the new fundamental properties of hybrid, functional or reduced-dimension materials and the devices that can emerge from them.
Finally, the development of innovative techniques and research methods in materials engineering is a natural theme for the Institute.
- Director: Xavier Carrier
- Director and deputy directors : Sophie Cassaignon, Zoheir Aboura, Franck Vidal
Overview:
The Sorbonne University Alliance’s Ocean Institute, in association with the French Navy and naval school, brings together marine and maritime sciences.
Challenges and impacts:
Marine and maritime sciences play an important role in a range of fronts of knowledge and economic and societal issues: sustainable development, food, energy, geostrategy...
Transdisciplinary aspects:
Relying on a large number of laboratories and the Alliance’s five marine stations, the Institut de la Mer assembles a strategic set of disciplinary fields and skills, conducive to the emergence of new concepts, innovative projects and unexpected synergies.
Scientific themes:
The institute studies the sea as part of the history of the Earth, life and society. This approach is undertaken for analyses of the sea at different time scales and periods (geological, prehistoric, historical, current) and is a firmly original aspect of the institute, made possible in large part thanks to the diverse components that make up the Alliance.
The Ocean Institute also centers on the specificities of marine and coastal environments in terms of risks and adaptations to global changes. This subject is at once topical and near inescapable in many disciplines, which require a transdisciplinary approach that takes into account the oceanic and coastal specificities of impacts as well as the notion of marine biomes, maritime geopolitics and marine traffic.This will involve studying the expansion of marine and maritime traffic in all its forms—ships, people and cultures, goods, pandemics, species, etc. in the Mediterranean region— and their ecological and geopolitical implications, such as the issues of appropriation and exploitation of the oceans, which may become the source of tomorrow's conflicts.
Director: Marina Lévy
Deputy director : Nadia Améziane
The Sorbonne University Institute for Environmental Transition (SU-ITE) aims to create innovative education and research dynamics in major issues of the environment, sustainable development and the construction of a post-COP 21 society.
To this end, it relies on its ability to implement interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral approaches to contribute to the environmental transition of societies. It encourages interactions between research and education teams and the stakeholders of society (political, economic, social).
The Institute's work in education and research is structured around three main scientific areas: controlling climate change and its consequences, creating the conditions for responsible and sustainable use of resources and energies, and governing biodiversity and drawing inspiration from nature.
The mission of the University Institute for Health Engineering (IUIS) is to encourage educational, scientific and technological innovation in health by providing a structure to host multidisciplinary teams grouped around three themes to be approached in an interactive way: engineering, health, humanities and social sciences.
The IUIS thus makes it possible to federate, coordinate and develop education, research and development, innovation and transfer activities on a larger scale.
- Director: Isabelle Bloch
- Deputy Director: Geoffroy Canlorbe
The Heritage Observatory (OPUS) promotes a broad, innovative and operational field through a synergy of scientific, pedagogical and heritage resources of the Sorbonne University Alliance. The Observatory, using different approaches and tools, links objects, specialities, temporalities, to the concept of heritage (cultural and natural).
The complementary nature of the Sorbonne University Alliance's scientific expertise in these heritage issues, as well as the extraordinary range of expertise and technical resources available to it, is a major asset in terms of research, the dissemination of knowledge, and the management, conservation and promotion of collections.
It has identified four main areas of research: to deal with heritage objects in all their diversity; to cultivate an interdisciplinary approach, to keep an active watch on the evolution of the concept of heritage and the phenomena of the preservation of heritage; and to affirm the social usefulness of the Alliance's work.
- Director: Nathalie Ginoux
- Deputy director: Olivier Aïm
SCAI, the Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence, brings together a strategic range of modern artificial intelligence disciplines in a unique location in the heart of the Latin Quarter.
SCAI's ambition is to make a significant contribution to the excellence of interdisciplinary research and education in artificial intelligence by promoting exchanges between researchers, academics, students and industrialists.
Its aim is to showcase the Sorbonne University Alliance's know-how in the field of artificial intelligence and to be a gateway for academic and industrial partners.
This project is supported by numerous academic researchers from the three faculties of Sorbonne University and the institutions of the Sorbonne University Alliance, who have been mobilised to ensure its success.