Transition to sustainability
Transition to sustainability
The theme of sustainability, which comes with many challenges, is deeply anchored within the SEED programme. In order to address these upcoming transitions that lie ahead, the programme aims to metaphorically plant the seeds of research that shall germinate and grow into a sustainable future.
To achieve this goal, SEED focuses on six strategic orientations outlined by IMT Atlantique and linked to the priorities of RIS3 of the regions of Bretagne and Pays de la Loire in the following fields: digital, environmental, industrial, energy, health, and fundamental research.
Digital transition
Digital technology has brought about significant changes in our lives and in our ways of working. These changes touch on research in the areas of both digital sciences and the uses and acceptance of digital technology, involving multi-disciplinary research in Humanities and Social Sciences. This area of research makes it possible, for example, to observe the uses of ICT and to provide open data to citizens.
Industrial transition
Industrial transition theme ranges from Industry 5.0 to man-machine interfaces and augmented reality. It includes artificial intelligence and human factors, digital factories or production lines, reconfigurability and adaptability of production systems based on scheduling, production and maintenance planning, and bio-inspired robotics as well as robust and reliable control methods.
Health of the future
Health of the future: This ranges from the design and development of medical devices. It also includes the modelling of new e-Health solutions from the economic perspective in terms of societal impact, to the evaluation of medical technologies and innovation in the organisation of health services. Finally, it includes digital medical data security, data science and medical decision support, interventional surgery support via image processing and augmented or virtual reality, as well as functional or orthoptic rehabilitation.
Energy transition
Energy transition covers the production of renewable and alternative energies from turning waste into alternative fuels, to smart energy networks within the context of decentralised multi-energy production. This includes issues of thermodynamic and chemical storage or intelligent storage by managing the recharging for electric vehicles, as well as the reducing the energy footprint of industrial and urban systems, and of infrastructures and communication networks.
Environmental transition
Environmental transition is organised into three main areas: engineering, metrology, and observation and ICT for the environment, with diversified application sectors covering the sea, and urban and industrial territories.
Fundamental research
Fundamental research transition ranges from highly fundamental to fully applicable research work. Corresponding research in mathematics focuses on algorithms for signal processing, statistical methods for data analysis, machine learning algorithms, multi-objective optimisation, formal methods for code analysis and proof, algorithms for coding, decoding and information processing, and neuro-inspired algorithms for AI. In physics, it concerns the study of elementary particles, as well as the search for dark matter and cosmic rays, the physics of the nucleus or the study of the properties of radio-elements. It also includes understanding flows at fluid-solid interfaces.