UA-France Engineering Program Ranked Best in Class, Awarded $300,000
A materials and optical engineering research partnership between UA and French universities has been awarded $300,000 to fund mobility between its various international member institutions.
The International Associated Laboratory for Materials and Optics was inaugurated in 2010 when UA President Robert Shelton met on the UA campus with Frederic Benoliel of the French National Center for Scientific Research.
The laboratory's creation was the result of 10 years of collaboration between Pierre Lucas, a UA associate professor of materials science and engineering, and the group of Jean Luc Adam of the University of Rennes in France.
The award consisted of $240,000 from the Partner University Fund established in 2007 by the New York-based French American Cultural Exchange Foundation, plus an additional €40,000 Univ-Link award, about $56,000, from the French ministry of higher education and research.
"The French national Univ-Link award covers all fields of science," Lucas said. "It was given to us by the French higher education and research ministry because we were rated first out of the 12 projects funded this year by the Partner University Fund for promoting collaborative exchange in research and education."
Lucas said the awards would be used to promote excahnges among the partner universities -- Rennes, Lilles, and Arizona -- as well as a new collaborator, the National Graduate School of Engineering in Caen, France. "A big part of these awards will be dedicated to funding the mobility of graduate students involved in dual PhD degrees between UA and French institutes," Lucas said. "These students will alternate research and class between the two counterpart foreign institutes."
French higher education and research minister, Valérie Péresse, announced the €40,000 Univ-Link award when she visited the US in April. She described the joint effort as an ambitious project that focuses on advanced materials for energy and optics and meets three dimensions: student mobility, joint degrees and joint research projects.
