In September 2008, the Compiègne University of Technology (UTC) will be welcoming the Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Organique et Minérale (ESCOM, higher school of organic and mineral chemistry) now based in Cergy Pontoise, to its campus. At the same time as the move, a rapprochement should take place with the Institut Polytechnique LaSalle Beauvais, created in September 2006, after the IGAL and ISAB merge. The plan for a rapprochement is an original answer to the needed reorganization of French higher education. The goal is to hoist Picardie to the rank of European Cluster for Green Chemistry. This is also consistent with the framework of the Industries and Agroressources (IAR) competitive cluster.
The two schools will be drawing on their skills and expertise in Earth and Life Sciences for LaSalle Beauvais and in biotechnologies and process engineering for the UTC. The schools plan to strengthen their synergy in research. The first focus will obviously be the entire agroressource chain, integrating production and processing processes, including green chemistry, the focus of the cluster underway with the arrival of ESCOM at Compiègne. The research partnership will not be limited to the single field of 'industries and agroressources' but will also enhance the scientific complementarity between UTC and LaSalle Beauvais, specifically in the environmental industries (in collaboration with INERIS), the geosciences, technologies applied to agriculture, food processing, and so on.
One of the first large-scale projects of the partnership is the creation of an R&D platform in Chemistry - Thermochemistry (CTC). The first shared scientific tool, engineered under the 2007-2013 State-Region contract, will supplement the regional scientific arrangement on agroressource processing, offering new outlooks for biomass enhancement. In the years to come, the platform should lead to research and expertise activities on biomass enhancement.
