Can we have a brief introduction to Esisar Grenoble INP and what it’s offering to the aerospace industry in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes?

The Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble is a public sector technology university consisting of six engineering schools, with over 5200 students and over 1400 teaching and research staff. The entire university has strong links with the aerospace industry in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, with 1,200 of our students undertaking industry placements each year. In particular, the Esisar Grenoble INP school in Valence is focused on developing embedded systems, radio frequency solutions and digital technology in industrial applications. (mains fields are Electrical engeneering and computer sciences)

The school has 500 students and 80 engineering teaching staff. Connected to Esisar, we also have the research laboratory, the Laboratory of Design and Integration Systems (LCIS), which is staffed by around 50 permanent researchers and 30 PhD students at a time, and which has several collaborations with major players in the aerospace industry. We have the means, the skills and the expertise to provide a broad range of research-based services to the aerospace industry, because we are highly specialized in the area and we have a concentrated volume of appropriately qualified talent and physical resources. In addition to a broad range of research services, we also provide test campaigns for avionics systems through our technological platform ‘Esynov’, in order to confirm that they adhere to the standards required by all relevant regulatory bodies. (DO160G standard)

How do the teaching and industrial research elements of Esisar Grenoble INP complement each other?

The links between teaching and research are very strong, and provide lasting benefits for both our students and our industrial partners. Every year, we take on about 100 undergraduate students for our five year engineering program, and around 10% of them go on to undertake their PhD programs in the laboratories here, which are partnered with companies in the aerospace industry. It is a truly collaborative R&D system that benefits everyone.

Esisar also provides a specific framework for collaboration with SME, whereby they can mobilize a team of three students for six months dedicated to working on an innovation process. Each year we carry out around 25 of these industrial projects. While participating companies benefit from the program by having the access to our research resources and talent, they also receive significant financial benefits from partnering with us as a result of government incentives such as the research tax credit system, which awards tax discounts to companies that collaborate with academic structures for research.

Our partner companies also benefit in the longer term because in building relationships with young engineering talent, they are ensuring that they will not be affected by the shortage of qualified talent that so many other companies are facing. Big companies will always be attractive to graduates, but it is very difficult for SMEs to recruit sufficiently qualified engineers today because the entire European market needs around twice as many engineers than we currently have. Many of our partner companies avoid this difficulty by retaining their PhD students as permanent staff after the collaboration with LCIS or Esisar Grenoble INP is over.

The contributions that these students will make to their employers are significant, because we have already bridged the gap between the high level of theoretical knowledge that students have after graduation, and the industrial experience that they need acquire to succeed and excel in the workplace.

What are the goals for ESISAR Grenoble INP for the next 3-5 years?

We have developed a new Masters program in digital technology cyber security, which was a strategic decision made in response to the new risks arising from the implementation of new technologies in the aerospace sector. Embedded systems and the internet of things bring so many advantages in terms of manufacturing and operational efficiency, but they also present an entirely new type of hacking and security risk, both for individual companies and government bodies. We anticipate a shortage of qualified talent in this area in the coming years as there are currently very few electrical engineers specialized in security, so we are investing in this area of training and technology transfer in order to fill the gap.