On August 23rd, IMT Atlantique received the Governor of Aichi Province in Japan, Mr. Hideaki OHMURA, on its Rennes campus, accompanied by a delegation of officials from his government. This visit ended with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Aichi Province and IMT Atlantique.
Stéphane Roy, Director of International Relations and Academic Partnerships at IMT Atlantique and Mr. Hideaki OHMURA, Governor of Aichi Province.
The province of Aichi, one of the most active provinces serving Japanese industry (Toyota among others), has a strong interest in bottom-up innovation (based on academic research) and start-up culture as practiced in France with large-scale projects in AI, robotics, digital, environment and energy. IMT Atlantique's experience in these scientific fields and particularly in the field of entrepreneurship provided the basis for the first exchanges.
Incubation and entrepreneurship training
The visit organised on the Rennes campus for the Governor of Aichi Province in Japan, Mr. Hideaki OHMURA, and members of his government allowed them to discover at first hand the model set up at IMT Atlantique, combining research, training and innovation, particularly through the incubator. The success rate of the companies incubated at IMT Atlantique and the presentation of the approach of the optics department and SenX, a Brest start-up, incubated at IMT Atlantique, specialized in data collection and analysis, convinced the Aichi government of the interest of this approach for their own strategy to develop a major innovation centre.
The memorandum of understanding between the province of Aichi and ITM Atlantique initially concerns the transfer of the school's know-how in incubation and entrepreneurship training. More immediately, a partnership will be established with Nagoya University (83rd in the Shanghai ranking) to develop research cooperation and student exchange.
by Fabienne MILLET-DEHILLERIN
