Presentation
Learn more about LINEACT CESI
The objective of research at CESI is to produce knowledge and methods at the service of the scientific community. Its current organization is linked to the fields of training and helps a better identification of CESI LINEACT within the research ecosystem.
It puts its results at the service of CESI’s partner companies and contributes, in its fields, to take up the technological challenges in the territories that host and nourish it. It is also at the service of CESI learners to participate in their training through research.
The National Directorate of Research and Innovation
The National Directorate of Research and Innovation, headed by Bélahcène MAZARI, was set up to implement research in the regions in line with the national strategy. The research correspondents, in each of the 6 CESI regions, ensure the coordination and the diffusion of the different actions towards the regional teams of the different actions. A program development and management unit completes the system in conjunction with CESI’s finance department.
The whole set shapes the research unit of CESI: CESI LINEACT – Digital Innovation Laboratory for Companies and Apprenticeships for the Competitiveness of Territories. In February 2024, it brings together 94 teachers-researchers including 16 HDR (entitlement to supervise research), 12 research engineers and 57 PhD students (including 6 international students co-supervised by CESI teachers-researchers), as well as 2 administrative and financial executives and 2 assistants. As the platforms generate an activity that also requires an increasing number of resources, 4 of the above research engineers are partially dedicated to them, as well as a teacher-researcher (already listed above) and an associate teacher-researcher. This shapes a team of 167 people, to which we can add 100 associate teachers-researchers.
The research engineers are transverse to the research teams and application domains.
In the territories, the logic of complementarity and location shapes our strategy. Thus CESI, while being affiliated at the national level to the ComUE HESAM, promotes in its regions the links with the local ComUE. The CESI LINEACT teams are thus in fact in a dynamic of collaboration which facilitates their integration in collaborative research programs. Relations with higher education institutions and research laboratories have been strongly developed in recent years. Great attention has also been paid to competitiveness clusters and industrial sectors, with a permanent search for complementarity and coherence with other territorial actors. A detailed analysis of each territory and each campus was carried out before determining the themes developed.
CESI‘s historical proximity to companies is a determining factor for our research activities, and has led us to focus our efforts on applied research close to the company and in partnership with them. A human-centered approach coupled with the use of technologies, as well as the territorial network and the links with training, have made it possible to build a transversal research; it puts the human, its needs and its uses, at the center of its problems and approaches the technological angle through these contributions.
Research themes
Research is positioned on two complementary and unifying scientific themes and two major areas of application:
- Team 1: “Learning and Innovating”, which brings together cognitive, social and management sciences, as well as training and innovation sciences and techniques; Team 1 can address application areas broader than those of the Construction 4.0 and sustainable city or the Industry 5.0. The main scientific objectives targeted by this theme are the understanding of the effects of the environment, and more particularly of situations instrumented by technical objects (platforms, prototyping workshops, immersive systems…) on learning and creativity processes.
- Team 2: “Engineering and digital tools” which brings together skills in the fields of digital sciences and engineering sciences; it is mostly adapted to the two application areas below. The main scientific objectives of this theme relate to the modelling and optimization of systems, as well as data processing, data analysis and decision-making processes applied to both application areas.
The two application domains of the Construction 4. 0 and sustainable city and the Industry 5.0 enable us to combine the business skills essential to the implementation of our projects around our scientific themes. They respond to the two major challenges that are the energy and digital transitions of our societies. The interactions between the scientific themes and the application domains are described in the diagram here below.
Themes at the heart of current economic and societal issues
Different organizations must integrate new technologies to maintain their competitiveness while promoting creativity and innovation among their employees. They must also ensure that their employees are able to develop the new skills required for tomorrow’s businesses.
We are also working to intensify the cross-fertilization between the two themes, through research projects that mobilize the scientific and technological skills of both teams.
The projects are supported by three research and transfer platforms “Factory of the Future” and “Building of the Future“, which also serve as research and pedagogical back-up.
A first remarkable research and transfer platform “Factory of the Future“, the first elements of which were set up in 2014 at the Rouen center, is structured in two main areas:
- one is dedicated to the research activities necessary to support industrial R&D projects on the themes of industrial performance; the other brings together the transfer activities towards companies, particularly SMEs,
- in order to support them in their short-term projects of innovation and optimization of industrial performance. The field of the Industry of the Future is mainly dealt with at the plant level.
A second remarkable research and transfer platform “Building of the Future” is located in the premises of the center of Nanterre; it hosts modular premises for experiments, creativity sessions, practical work and research and innovation work. This platform is intended to be a demonstrator of CESI’s Research and Innovation activities in the field of the city of the future, mainly at the building level.
A third platform is also located in Nanterre, an autonomous unit of metal additive manufacturing.
In addition, a strong collaboration exists with the Tipee platform, located in La Rochelle; in partnership with the local authorities, this platform is dedicated to the rehabilitation of buildings, labeled by the Sustainable Building Plan and partner of the CSTB. Tipee has become the first technological platform for sustainable building. These platforms are used by the two research teams; all teachers and researchers on the different campuses can access these means in the context of their research work.
Organisation
