Created in 1965, the University Nice Sophia Antipolis (UNS) is established throughout the Alpes-Maritimes Department in Nice, Cannes, Menton, and Grasse and is a major player of the Sophia Antipolis science park. It welcomes every year more than 25 000 students of which about 1 300 PhD students distributed over several campuses and faculties. It counts nearly 2 700 staff members: more than 1 600 teachers and teachers-researchers and nearly 1100 administrative staff members (librarians, engineers, managers, technicians and workers). UNS is research intensive, pluridisciplinary and internationally open up (nearly 20% of international students) and thus stands within the top 3% university world ranking.
Two institute/research centre of UNS will be involved in the project:
- New Institute of the University Nice Sophia Antipolis, IMREDD defines a new form of cooperation between higher education, research laboratories, companies competitiveness clusters and local authorities in the field of green technologies and the smart city. Four fields of strategic studies have been defined: smart district/building and energy; water cycle and environment; risks; smart and sustainable mobility. IMREDD develops activities around an open technological platform today prefigured by the « Smart City Innovation Centre (SCIC) » officially launched in 2015. Key place for cross-fertilization and exploration of new ideas, SCIC fosters collaboration between the research & education players and the smart city leading enterprises. The SCIC enables to view in real time all the data collected by the Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis (NCA) and illustrates the global city monitoring results. Through four problematic areas linked to the IMREDD’s fields of study – environment, risks, energy and mobility -, the showroom (made up of multi screens walls and a 360° cabin immersive screen) presents a special focus on all or part of a business or thematic activity.
Based in the heart of the Nice Meridia business district (Eco-Valley), IMREDD stands as a «Reference Center » addressing the following societal challenges: Smart territory, Risks prevention and Management. As a “reference center », the IMREDD technological platform is being financed through the French National Programme « investing for the future-IDEX SITE”, a French label awarded to Université Côte d’Azur (UCA) (*) for the scientific excellence and the potential development of the regional site’s visibility and its national and international reach.
- GREDEG (Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion) is a joint research centre affiliated to the University of Nice – Sophia Antipolis and the CNRS (Centre national de la recherché scientifique). It has a high-level experience in the research field of smart cities and communities, with particular reference to energy and mobility. GREDEG researchers work in a broad variety of fields including economics, management, business and law. It has a staff of more than 100 full time researchers including doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows. The research centre has also proved sound experience in the management of both national and international research projects.
(*) Université Côte d’Azur (UCA) is a research-intensive community of Universities and Higher Education Institutions created in 2015, composed of 13 members and gathering more than 30 000 students. It brings together University Nice Sophia Antipolis as well as public institutions with a scientific and technical vocation and other actors contributing to higher education and research Alpes-Maritimes Department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region. Winner of the “Idex” call for project proposal in 2016, it has the ambition to increase the site’s visibility and its national and international reach and to be ranked within the top-10 French research universities, comparable to the world’s best universities.