KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER AT UNIVERSITE PARIS-SACLAY

Facilities and Resources

Université Paris-Saclay stretches over an extensive geographical area which includes several campuses. As the capital of French tech, this area, with its extensive student community trained in entrepreneurship, offers a wide range of facilities and services for businesses.

1) Université Paris-Saclay PluginLabs provide a single entry point to the skills and facilities of public research at Université Paris-Saclay. Created in 2018, this digital platform enables companies to discover the skills of laboratories and technology platforms and identify potential partners for future innovative projects. It includes more than 500 experimental platforms divided into three fields (science & engineering, life sciences and social sciences & humanities), six strategic industrial sectors (aerospace; security and defence; health and biotech; mobility of the future; information and communication technology; energy and environment; agrotech and foodtech) and 220 laboratories exploring eight themes: quality of life, health and food; chemistry and materials; complex systems and software engineering; energy, ecology and environment; social, societal and solidarity-based innovation; aeronautics, aerospace and defence; mobility and transport, and digital technology. 

2) Six Fab Labs dedicated to promoting research and spreading education to the commons, where mentoring, creating and designing take place and where sharing is a rule. Each Fab Lab has its own technological specificities.

3) Six incubators.

4) The Design Spot is the university's design centre. It aims to support students, researchers and entrepreneurs in their R&D projects by providing them with design expertise to meet the expectations of tomorrow’s society. The Design Spot organises workshops and meetings, conferences and master classes to promote the design disciplines throughout the Paris Saclay R&I ecosystem.

Partnerships and Collaboration Models

Links with industrial partners are a strong driver which allow for knowledge transfer whilst ensuring that the university benefits from application and market expertise. Collaboration with companies is encouraged through various adapted schemes.

1) CIFRE theses: Industrial Research Training Agreements (CIFRE) is a national programme which strengthens exchanges between public research laboratories and the socio-economic network. Participation in these agreements allows companies to receive financial support to recruit a student for their PhD (three years of research) at Université Paris-Saclay, leading to the writing of a thesis. It requires the joint supervision of a PhD student by both an academic supervisor and an industrial/corporate supervisor. The PhD candidate shares their time between academic and corporate labs.

2) Joint laboratories represent the strongest achievement in a long-term partnership. These five-year collaborations involve companies of all sizes and are based on a common scientific theme shared by the company and the laboratory. The company benefits from cutting-edge expertise in a specific field, shared governance and the pooling of material and human resources.

3) Framework agreement: it can be signed between Université Paris-Saclay and a company to facilitate and accelerate collaboration over a given period. The agreement sets out the general terms of cooperation between the two parties, defining the objectives, areas of collaboration, distribution of industrial property, etc.

4) Patent licence agreements: Université Paris-Saclay has a varied portfolio of patents. Patent licensing agreements provide companies with rapid access to university innovations, reducing development costs and speeding up the time-to-market of technologies.

5) Investments and shareholdings in university start-ups, which are opportunities to acquire a stake in a young company, contribute strategic expertise and share in its success.

Impact and Success Stories

Joint Laboratory with Quandela: On 13 November 2024, Quandela, the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Université Paris-Saclay and Université Paris Cité inaugurated the QDlight joint laboratory focusing on research in quantum photonics at the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (CN2 - CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay/Université Paris-Cité). Over the course of six years, the teams will expand scientific cooperation with a view to developing next generation quantum light emitters, as well as their applications in quantum information technology to secure unprecedented computing power.

Founded in 2017, the start-up Quandela, emerging from the Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, has gradually established itself as a pioneer in developing photonic quantum computers. This promising spin-off was based on works from researchers of the C2N and specialised in the creation of quantum light sources. It maintained strong links with its original laboratory throughout its development, leading to the implementation of the joint laboratory QDLight in 2024. 

This perfectly illustrates the innovation process of knowledge transfer of a technology from a lab to a start-up.