UM Designated as a University Innovation Hub
On Monday, July 10, 2023, Research Retailleau, Minister of Higher Education and Research , officially announced the designation of the University of Montpellier as a University Innovation Cluster, with a new allocation of €6,500,000 for the second phase, bringing the total amount awarded across the two phases of the PUI to €9,000,000.
“Receiving this accreditation is a wonderful recognition of the work undertaken by the entire University of Montpellier and the partners of our I-SITE Excellence Program, in collaboration with the local innovation ecosystem, over many years. “UM is a stronghold of innovation, and this confirmation will further strengthen this collective momentum,” said Philippe Augé, President of the University of Montpellier.
The PUI certification process in a nutshell
To promote and accelerate the application of research findings for the benefit of the French people, the government is implementing an ambitious policy to support innovation and startup creation as part of the France 2030 plan. Established by the Research Programming Act (LPR), University Innovation Hubs (PUI) certify organizations capable of making knowledge and technology transfer offerings more accessible and streamlining public-private relationships and partnerships. Based on regional specificities and constraints, this designation enables the implementation of a consolidated strategy at the level of a major university campus, thereby organizing, in an operational manner, interactions with the business community by closely involving campus stakeholders engaged in student entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and collaborative research: universities, organizations, technology transfer accelerators, incubators…
Official accreditation for the University of Montpellier!
The PUI brings together stakeholders who are already collaborating through the I-SITE initiative for excellence and/or the AxLR technology transfer agency, as well as the main public contributors to innovation efforts on the site (Montpellier Metropolitan Area, Occitanie Region, BPI France). Together, they make Montpellier’s innovative dynamism a global selling point and a lever for a region that knows it must rely above all on the knowledge economy for its development. The project is led by the University of Montpellier, which acts on behalf of all its partners, members of the PUI, in a spirit of shared governance, as was the case during the MUSE project.
Following an initial pilot phase launched in November 2021 involving five pilot institutions, the minister announced last January that 165 million euros had been allocated for their large-scale rollout. Among them is the University of Montpellier, which, as part of its I-SITE Excellence Program, had received an initial grant of 2.5 million euros.For the second phase, the University of Montpellier visited the ANR headquarters on June 21 for an oral presentation on the second phase of the Montpellier University Cluster. The delegation included Philippe Augé, President of the University of Montpellier, who outlined the institution’s role and policy as the lead partner (including past and future transformations to support innovation); Philippe Combette, Vice President for Partnerships and Innovation at the University of Montpellier and coordinator of the PUI; Philippe Nérin, President of SATT AxLR; and Clélia Oliva, co-founder and president of TERRATIS, accompanied by the University Innovation Cluster.
On Monday, July 10, 2023, Sylvie Retailleau, Minister of Higher Education and Research, officially announced that the University of Montpellier had been designated a university innovation hub, receiving a total grant of €9 million across both phases (a higher total amount than that awarded to the University of Toulouse Innovation, for example).
Goals and initiatives specific to the University of Montpellier
Establishing a university innovation hub in Montpellier means accelerating the transformation of technological and scientific advances into products and services capable of finding markets, generating value, and creating jobs in our region. The overall goal is to create more sustainable, high-quality connections between the worlds of higher education and research and the socio-economic sector. The PUI brings project partners together around a common strategy of partnerships with economic stakeholders to encourage technological and societal innovations. Every effort is being made to ensure that stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem work in synergy and complement each other in areas such as skills development, innovation marketing, and process alignment…
So, what are the UM’s objectives and initiatives? To gain a better understanding of our markets and raise our profile within them, to develop partnerships, to train our workforce in innovation, to identify more startup projects and provide better support for them, and to ensure the efficient oversight and management of the project and our entire innovation ecosystem.
Practical information:
Date of certification: July 10, 2023