The Grenoble-Swansea Strategic Partnership originated as a research collaboration to develop a Franco-Welsh alliance in the areas of nanoscience, energy and ageing which was supported by the French Embassy and Welsh Government.
Since then Swansea academics have collaborated with Grenoble academics in a range of disciplines including Artificial Intelligence, Biosciences, Computer Science, Engineering, Human and Health Sciences, Law, Medicine, Mathematics, Physics and Sports Science.
Research collaboration remains at the heart of the strategic partnership with:
- Regular programmes of focused visits to initiate and expand relationships
- Dedicated staff employed by both Swansea and Grenoble to provide support at project inception and cross-institutional linkages
The result has been a multi-disciplinary academic collaboration with world-leading academics working together to combine research synergies and complementary expertise to deliver new research projects, joint grant applications, new academic networks, joint conferences, conference papers and co-authored publications.
Grenoble-Swansea Strategic Plan 2021-2026
For the first five years of the partnership research collaborations were driven largely from grass roots.
In 2020 it was decided to build on the partnership’s solid foundations and develop a common management structure and 5-year Strategic Plan.
A core objective of this plan is to build on past successes and develop a shared methodology to identify future research topics.
Some of the current joint focus areas are detailed below:
Resilience
The Resilience Research theme is a cluster of multi-disciplinary collaborations focused on the theme of resilience.
The project commenced with a joint online workshop in May 2021 which brought together academics from both universities to identify common interests and funding opportunities. The focus of the workshop was climate and environmental resilience, resilient societies, resilient organisations, and resilient infrastructure and sustainable cities.
There is now a programme of on-line and face to face events in place that provide researchers from across multiple disciplines with an opportunity to come together to tackle some of the key issues arising from rapidly changing economic, social, and natural environments as well those that have been raised by the Covid-19 pandemic. Current subthemes are:
- Resilient Building and infrastructure
- Innovations for Resilience
- Territorial/ Community Resilience
- Data Modelling for risk and vulnerability
Click here to read more about previous resilience events.
To find out how to get more involved in the seminar series and partnership with UGA please contact the Academic Partnerships Deparment.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DATA SYSTEMS
Academics from Swansea and Grenoble have worked together to develop the Grenoble-Swansea Centre for AI (GoSCAI)
GoSCAI is a joint human-centred AI and data research centre which aims to create a world-leading community that drives advances in data and intelligence based systems by taking a “people-first” approach. The focus of the centre is AI that will benefit humans, society, and the environment.
For further information click here.
Semiconductor and Microelectronics
A new partnership between Swansea’s Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials (CISM) and Grenoble’s Laboratoire dec Technologies de la Microelectronique (LTM) aims to build on the strengths of both institutions and the associated clusters within their regions (the CS Connected Cluster within South Wales and the MINATEC cluster in Grenoble) to develop a vibrant partnership focused on semiconductor innovation for Net Zero.
