Acceleration@CNRS Engineering

Funding is available to researchers affiliated with CNRS Engineering for projects on reparation, rehabilitation and regeneration. 

France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) is a public scientific and technological establishment operating under the French Ministère de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche (MESR – Ministry of Higher Education and Research). It consists of various thematic institutes and carries out research to advance scientific knowledge as well as to generate social, cultural, and economic progress.

CNRS’ engineering institute has launched a call for proposals titled Acceleration, focused on addressing the challenges associated with repairability. Extending the lifespan of components, devices, structures or inert or living systems has become a major challenge in terms of sustainable development., In addition to initial design (frugality, ageing, life cycle analysis), sustainability also involves actions such as repairing, rehabilitation or regeneration. 

Depending on the fields and applications involved, which affect a number of sectors, from healthcare (reparative or regenerative medicine) to transportation, along with energy, electronics, processes and construction, the concepts of repair, rehabilitation and regeneration cover a variety of issues in which engineering science, thanks to its specific methods and approaches, plays a decisive role. For example, in the industrial sector (transport, food processing and process engineering in the broad sense) the integration of adapted structures and/or materials (self-repairing fibres, microcapsules of repairing agents, shape memory), paired with control techniques, allow for an improvement in repair capacity and monitoring of industrial installations and systems. In the field of energy transition (electrification, renewable energy) and the decarbonisation of industrial processes, new scientific challenges are emerging regarding resilience to failures and damage (self-healing capability, automatic switching), disturbance control, robustness (modularity), integrity and system repairability. Similar challenges related to repair, rehabilitation and regeneration can also be seen in a range of other fields, including healthcare, electronics and construction and civil engineering. 

In response to these challenges, Acceleration@CNRS Engineering is designed to support original, ambitious research based on the theme of repairability. Proposed projects, rooted in the disciplines of CNRS Engineering or at their interfaces, must support the emergence of new methodologies, new concepts or devices, or innovative theoretical, digital or experimental approaches, while assuming a level of scientific risk. The programme encourages interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary projects, though this is not obligatory.