The launch day of the INSPIRE project, which took place on Thursday 24 November 2016 at the University of Paris Diderot, allowed the 29 winners of an INSPIRE doctoral contract to be received at the Sorbonne Paris Cité University (USPC).
By offering 60 doctoral contracts to candidates with a strong international background, the INSPIRE project aims to strengthen the international anchoring and improve the international visibility of the Sorbonne Paris Cité University and the research teams affiliated to its member institutions.
The program of this exceptional day with the doctoral students INSPIRE and their thesis director began with a welcome from Mrs Christine Clerici, President of the University of Paris Diderot, who congratulated the winners and reminded them of the challenge but also of the professional and personal achievement that the doctorate represents.
Each doctoral student also had the opportunity to present his or her thesis project in 3 minutes. The richness and variety of the thesis subjects presented, from Social Sciences and Humanities to Life Sciences and Physical Sciences and Engineering, have contributed to the enrichment of everyone. Among all these projects, let us mention for example:
- Social Protection Systems in the age of globalization and financialization: challenges for redistribution (Ana Carolina CORDILHA),
- The elaboration of aspectual categories in French grammars (Benoît VEZIN)
- Real-time probing in vivo RNA structure and interactions by RNA-based synthetic structure sensors (Haotian GUO),
- Bio-inspired redox-active cavity-complexes for basic and applicative developments (Pamela AOUN).
The first call led to the recruitment of 29 doctoral candidates, half of whom are not nationals of the European Union (Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Vietnam, and United States). The doctoral students INSPIRE EU nationals come from Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany. Almost 50% of the winners obtained their bachelor’s degrees outside the EU and 83% completed their master’s degrees in the EU.
The INSPIRE project is coordinated by the University Paris Diderot, under the responsibility of Thomas Coudreau, Professor of Physics at the University Paris Diderot. The project is financed to the tune of 4.7 million euros by the European Union through the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie action, COFUND, and 1.6 million euros by USPC through the French government’s programme “Investissements d’avenir”.