Research at ESPCI ParisTech occupies a unique position in the French landscape, as fundamental research that aspires to excellence in major scientific areas, with very close ties to industry, and a recurrent source of important practical inventions. Discovery and invention are thus the drivers of scientific activity at the heart of academia and industry alike.
In addition to its education mission, the School hosts research laboratories, in close cooperation with CNRS, and UPMC (University of Paris 6), University of Paris Diderot (Paris 7), and Inserm, which pay permanent faculty and researchers. Industrial firms and institutions including the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, ANR), provide funding for PhD students and post-docs through specific contracts, e.g., research contracts and European contracts. Throughout its history, ESPCI ParisTech has preserved its standard of performance, encouraging flexible management of research, based on the excellence of its researchers. The institution regularly hosts small research teams in cutting-edge areas, thus ensuring great flexibility in developing research themes. This decentralized structure allows unceasing reactivity to advances in science and technology. Through a research policy that gives priority to agility and excellence, ESPCI ParisTech has preserved its position at the forefront of scientific progress.
Laboratory research areas
The creation of Institut Langevin has provided significant visibility to one of the School’s areas of excellence, waves and images, by grouping together two research laboratories of the highest scientific standard in acoustics and optics. ESPCI ParisTech can claim an international leadership position in the area of imaging in complex media, which is particularly vital to medicine, with many scientific and technological breakthroughs. Institut Langevin is also home to several start-ups, in keeping with the pioneering spirit of ESPCI ParisTech.
Largely under the impetus of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, ESPCI ParisTech has earned an international reputation in the area of soft matter, a field ranging from solid materials to complex fluids, from chemistry to physics, and from process engineering to very fundamental problems. Soft matter is a research area with fertile interactions with the world of industry. The School can federate research in this area in the Paris community, in the broadest sense of the term, and will actively support those initiatives.
The School is also a world-class institution in the area of solid-state physics and quantum materials, like Josephson junctions or highly correlated electron systems. It has strengthened capabilities in the area of quantum nanomaterials. Energy generation is an emerging field of interest, particularly solar photovoltaics. The development of these activities will be pursued energetically.
ESPCI ParisTech is recognized internationally in the organic synthesis of biologically-active compounds (e.g., antibiotic, antitumoral, antifungal and antidepressant compounds). Numerous collaborations have been established with French and international pharmaceutical firms. Interdisciplinary collaborations have been put in place with biologists and physicians to develop new specific antitumoral agents. ESPCI ParisTech is also a leader in analytical chemistry, with efficient methods for the detection and analysis of trace compounds in the environment, for which there is considerable demand from industry.
ESPCI ParisTech is also a leader in microfluidics, hydrodynamics, telecommunications, neurobiology, biophysics, and colloids, as well as in analysis and the environment.
One distinctive feature of ESPCI ParisTech is its fundamental research into major areas of concern to industry, while developing approaches to practical industrial problems. In the area of energy and sustainable development, is engaged in such remarkably varied fields as green chemistry, low CO2 footprint construction materials, materials for photovoltaic applications, green tires, vehicle aerodynamics, and the analysis of toxic chemicals. These actions are not currently identified under an "energy" banner, because they are conducted in research laboratories devoted to different research themes. ESPCI ParisTech must nurture the emergence of this overall theme, without disturbing the flexible functioning of the laboratories concerned.
