It was officially created last December 3, at the Chateau de Versailles, with President of the Versailles Estate and sponsor of the initiative Jean-Jacques Aillagon attending. The new university chair called Generating Eco-Innovation is the outcome of a partnership between the founders of the UniverSud Paris Research and Higher Education Center (PRES) and five large industrial groups, viz., Alstom, GDF-SUEZ, Italcementi, SAUR, and SNCF. The Center, a backbone structure for 21 higher education and research establishments in the southern Ile-de-France Region, brings together more than 200 research laboratories covering all the major scientific fields in the area of eco-innovation. Paris Sud 11 University, Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, ENS Cachan, Ecole Centrale Paris and Supélec founded the center.
The University Chair is built on cross-disciplinary themes, i.e., renewable energies, advanced detectors, biotechnologies, clean transportation and sustainable mobility, sustainable construction, the clear and sound production of goods, and new environmental technologies and services. Based on eco-innovation management, the Chair has several goals: one, to speed the passage between the different scientific fields and their industrial applications; two, to anticipate and meet the need for skills in eco-innovation development, for today and tomorrow's jobs. The curricula will also be promoting the emergence of eco-businesses based on new services, products, and detected skills. The other aim of the education program will be to provide guidance on all the opportunities and risks involved in an eco-innovative project, and build a network of international resources for eco-innovations.
The international education center, covering everything from R & D to entrepreneurship and promoting eco-innovations from their emergence in laboratories until they are marketed, will start its first, internationally recruited, class of students at the beginning of the 2009 academic year. One of the original features of the university chair is that it brings together the expertise of researcher/teachers, industry operators and finance and venture capital professionals. Aside from a Master's degree and doctorates, projects will be conducted between the research laboratories of UniverSud Paris PRES and partner businesses, under the aegis of the Chair.
