The UM awarded the University Innovation Hub label
On Monday, July 10, 2023, Minister of Higher Education and Research Retailleau officially announced the designation of the University of Montpellier as a university innovation hub with a new grant of €6,500,000 during the second phase, for a total of €9,000,000 allocated over the two phases of the PUI.
"Obtaining this certification is a wonderful recognition of the work undertaken by the entire University of Montpellier and the partners in our I-SITE Excellence program, in partnership with the local innovation ecosystem, over many years. Montpellier University is a stronghold of innovation, and this confirmation will further strengthen this collective dynamic," said Philippe Augé, President of Montpellier University.
The PUI certification principle in a nutshell
To promote and accelerate the use of research results for the benefit of French citizens, the government is rolling out an ambitious policy to support innovation and the creation of startups as part of the France 2030 plan. Provided for in the Research Programming Law (LPR), university innovation clusters (PUIs) certify organizations capable of making knowledge and technology transfer more transparent and facilitating public-private relations and partnerships. Based on specific regional characteristics and constraints, this label makes it possible to implement a consolidated strategy at the level of a large university site and thus organize, in an operational manner, exchanges with the business world by closely involving the site's stakeholders engaged in student entrepreneurship, transfer, and partnership-based research activities: universities, organizations, technology transfer acceleration companies, incubators, etc.
Official certification for the University of Montpellier!
The PUI brings together players who are already working together as part of the I-SITE initiative of excellence and/or SATT AxLR, as well as the main public contributors to innovation efforts in the area (Montpellier Metropolitan Area, Occitanie Region, BPI France), which together make Montpellier's dynamic innovation a global visibility argument 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 works on behalf of all its partners, members of the PUI, in a spirit of shared governance, as was the case during the MUSE project.
After an initial trial phase conducted since November 2021 in five pilot institutions, the minister announced in January that €165 million would be allocated for their large-scale deployment. Among them is the University of Montpellier, which received an initial grant of €2.5 million as part of its I-SITE Excellence program.For the second phase, the University of Montpellier visited the ANR headquarters on June 21 for an oral presentation of the second phase of the Montpellier university cluster. The delegation was composed of Philippe Augé, President of the University of Montpellier, who presented the role and policy of the institution as a leader (transformations achieved and to come in favor of innovation), Philippe Combette, Vice President of 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, a company supported by the university innovation cluster.
On Monday, July 10, 2023, the Minister of Higher Education and Research, Sylvie Retailleau, officially announced that the University of Montpellier had been designated a university innovation hub, receiving a total grant of €9 million over both phases (a higher total amount than the University of Toulouse Innovation, for example).
Objectives and actions specific to the University of Montpellier
Establishing a university innovation hub in Montpellier will accelerate the transformation of technological and scientific advances into products and services that can find their markets and generate value and jobs in our regions. The overall ambition is to create more lasting, high-quality connections between the worlds of higher education and research and the socio-economic world. The PUI brings together project partners around a common strategy of partnerships with economic actors in order to encourage technological and societal innovation. Every effort is made to ensure that the actors in the innovation ecosystem work in synergy and complementarity in terms of skills development, innovation marketing, process alignment, etc.
So, what are the UM's objectives and actions? To gain a better understanding of our markets and raise our profile, develop partnerships, train our human resources in innovation, identify more business creation projects and provide them with better support, and ensure the efficient steering and management of the project and our entire innovation ecosystem.
Practical information:
Date of certification: July 10, 2023