GREEN Graduate Program - Materials Inspired by Nature and for Energy and Sustainable Technologies (MINEST)

The 2022 class was sponsored by L'Oreal.

This master’s degree aims at offering an educational background connecting the laboratory environment and the living world while responding to ecological and sustainable transition challenges. Mimicking strategies elaborated by Nature represent infinite scientific and technological challenges. These challenges will be taken up through bioinspiration and biomimicry angles keeping in mind environmental awareness and ethics.

We offer our students a unique opportunity to explore and get inspired by living systems to develop novel materials. Our biomimetic approach focuses on cross-disciplinary courses that will make students reconsider how they elaborate syntheses, formulations, and processing of tomorrow’s materials as needed by the industrial partners to build our future society

In both the first and the second year of the master's, the students will be trained to draw inspiration from Nature through a biomimetic approach. This multidisciplinary approach, which resorts to both fundamental science and materials engineering, is based on the observation and comprehension of living organisms within their ecosystems. To succeed in this course, students will have to grasp abstract concepts to design biological models adapted to scientific and technological developments.

The teaching program, comprising lectures, supervised and practical work, and case studies, is primarily centered around student-based teaching strategies including Project-based learning. Entirely in English, teaching is performed by university lecturers and researchers as well as socio-professional stakeholders. The practical works and case studies take place in the laboratories of the Multidisciplinary Research Institute for the Environment and Materials (IPREM CNRS UMR 5254), using high-performance and cutting-edge equipment. Lectures are scheduled at the beginning of the training course to harmonize the basic knowledge of students originating from various educational backgrounds (biology, physics, and chemistry). Through this approach, we wish to develop the student’s soft skills to encourage autonomy and stimulate curiosity, creativity, and emotional intelligence. The primary objective is to train future young researchers with special know-how in collaborative thinking and able to drive bio-inspired research projects.

Assets

• Scholarships
• Training in English
• More than one-third of ECTS acquired in research
• Integrating research laboratories right from the 1st semester of M1
• Student-centered learning
• Multidisciplinarity (Chemistry, Physics, and Biology)
• Post-graduate studies with a Ph.D. thesis - if the criteria of excellence are recognized
• Tutorship and tailor-made programs: each student will have a tutor with whom he/she will build his/her curriculum related to his aspirations and research interests. The tutor will also help the student define a series of face-to-face or e-learning courses (up to 20 or 25% for the STEE GP) that s/he can easily keep up with.

A multidisciplinary university

The University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour (UPPA) is a multidisciplinary university which covers three major areas of study:

• Law, economics, business, management
• Science and technology
• literature, languages, arts, social sciences and humanities and sport

UPPA offers its students initial or continuing education, work/study programs or apprenticeships, to obtain Bachelor’s, Master’s and vocational degrees and Doctorates through its 3 Colleges and 2 Doctoral Schools.

The university also includes two IUTs (University Institute of Technology), one IAE (University School of Management), two engineering schools (ENSGTI, covering industrial technology engineering and ISA BTP covering construction), a continuing education department and an apprenticeship training center.

An ideal working environment

The teaching teams at UPPA prepare our 11,500 students to complete their course, but they are also attentive to the needs of students and are always available, and committed to our quality process.

Careers guidance and professional advice are also at the heart of each study program: student professional project, meetings with former students, job fairs, help with finding internships and jobs.

Scientific research at an international level

With 24 research units associated with research bodies such as the CNRS, INRA and INRIA, research at UPPA covers:

• 5 strategic themes:
  • Environment and materials
  • Geo-resources
  • Aquatic environments and resources
  • Justice and territories
  • Areas, borders and blending
• and one transversal and multidisciplinary theme: energy, environmental and social transitions.
• Institut Carnot ISIFoR (Institute for the sustainable engineering of fossil resources).
• Equipex MARSSEquipex MARSS (Mass Spectrometry center for Reactivity and Speciation Sciences).
• Equipex in the XYLOFORESTXyloforest Programme network (development of the wood sector).
• Labex in the STORE-EX network (electrochemical storage of energy).
• LabCom, shared laboratory with URGO.

A university firmly rooted in its region

Since its foundation in 1970, UPPA has formed relationships with local institutional and industrial partners, making it a major player in the economic development of southern Aquitaine.

It has forged some very strong links with major contractors, such as Total, Turboméca, Arkema, Toyal, Messier-Dowty and it supports SME/SMI through a hundred collaboration agreements.

UPPA is also supported by local authorities and is part of ComUEA, the Community of Universities and Higher Education Establishments in Aquitaine. It is also a member of SATT Aquitaine (Aquitaine Sciences Transfer)

Energy and Environment, keywords for the I-SITE project run by UPPA

As part of the “Future Investments” program launched by the government, UPPA submitted a proposal for the I-SITE project (Initiatives – Science – Innovation – Territories – Economy) with The E2S – Energy Environment Solutions project. Pre-selected in June 2016, the project is based on a consortium with the INRA and lnria linked to the region’s strong private and public R&D potential.

The consortium will run this project on the energy and environmental transition , in synergy with companies (Total, Arkema, TIGF and Safran Helicopter Engines) and academic partners (CEA, the CNRS, the University of the Basque Country and the University of Saragossa). E2S is also supported by local governments: the Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes Région, the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Landes Départements , the Pau Béarn Pyrénées Communauté d'agglomération , the Mont-de-Marsan Agglomération , and the Lacq-Orthez and Basque Communautés de communes .

E2S teams will meet challenges related to the energy transition, geo-resources, aquatic habitats and the environmental effects of natural and anthropogenic changes, in line with research and innovation developments by major industrial partners. The objective is to break down targeted scientific barriers (storage of CO2, production of biogas, new batteries, development of fully electric plane, etc.).

Specialists in Sciences, Humanities, Sociology, and Law will thus increase UPPA’s international attractiveness in cutting-edge fields with the world’s top institutions (Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, etc.) in particular through joint chairs; a still higher quality policy, postgraduate courses taught in English in the E2S field.

The project also involves changes in the university’s governance and organization, which will move towards a structure based on three major faculties, each including teaching, research, and innovation. Particular effort will be made regarding human resources to increase the number of academic researchers in E2S themes. Local industrial partnerships will complement the strengths of the consortium, giving significant leverage to research and innovation in these fields.