The School’s 17 research laboratories cover a broad range of scientific areas, and each has considerable autonomy. This decentralized structure allows them to continuously adjust to advances in science and technology, so they can in turn provide the impetus for new discoveries and inventions.
ESPCI ParisTech research activities are both of the highest academic standards, and open to the world of industry, often leading to business start-ups within the institution itself. This unique dialogue between start-ups and the research labs where they originated has proved to be mutually beneficial.
High-tech start-ups at ESPCI ParisTech have achieved considerable recognition.
- The School was again at the forefront in the 2009 National Innovating Technology Business Start-ups competition at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
- Sebastian Bardon (an ESPCI graduate and CEO of Capsum, a company that applies technology developed from research in the Colloids and Divided Materials Laboratory) and Bertrand Le Conte De Poly (CEO of LLTech, which applies research from the Physical Optics Laboratory), won in the "Creation & Development" category.
- Claude Hennion (an ESPCI graduate) won in the "Emergence" category for the Profilome project.
- In April 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy paid an official visit to SuperSonic Imagine, a start-up cofounded by Mathias Fink and Georges Charpak (Professors at ESPCI), Michael Tanter (Director of Research at ESPCI ParisTech and at INSERM), and Jeremy Bercoff (an ESPCI graduate).
- In January 2009, LLTech, a company that has developed a noninvasive optical biopsy system, based on research at the Physical Optics Laboratory at ESPCI ParisTech, received the Special Prize of the Jury for Innovation, at the 10th HEC Entrepreneurs Mercure awards.
- In July 2008, LLTech won the Grand Prize in Life Sciences in the French Senate’s Tremplin Entreprises awards.
- In October 2008, Mathias Fink (Professor and Director of the Waves and Acoustics Laboratory) was appointed a member of the Steering Committee for the National Strategy for Research and Innovation (SNRI) put in place by Valérie Pécresse, France’s minister for Higher Education and Research.
- In July 2008, Mathias Fink (Waves and Acoustics Laboratory) held the Liliane Bettencourt Chair for Technological Innovation at Collège de France for the 2008-2009 academic year.
- In September 2009, Jean-Louis Missika, the Deputy Mayor of Paris for Innovation, Research and Universities, and President of the Board of Directors of ESPCI ParisTech, inaugurated ParisTech Entrepreneurs, the new ParisTech incubator on Rue Dareau, in the 14th district of Paris.
