AgroParisTech and EDF Sign a Master Agreement to Initiate a Scientific Partnership

The framework agreement signed on February 1 between AgroParisTech, a higher education and research institution that directs a substantial amount of its research activities toward support for transitions in the areas of agriculture, food, and forestry, and EDF, will structure the partnership between the two entities in the area of research and expertise.

The agreement aims, in particular, to strengthen cooperation through new research projects, studies, and dissertations, in addition to improving the conditions and support offered to students in order to educate them and raise their awareness of the world of R&D. 

This partnership will leverage the expertise of the men and women who work in R&D at EDF, the corporation’s 70 testing platforms (some of which are unique in Europe and the world), and its simulation resources. It will also harness the knowledge generated by a long history of joint research projects and jointly supervised Ph.D. research, in addition to the opportunities offered at AgroParisTech’s Palaiseau campus.

This agreement is centered on seven major challenges for the future, each of which offers an opportunity for EDF and AgroParisTech to address issues on themes that require contributions from multiple disciplines and world-class science and engineering talent:

• energy efficiency in agri-food processes; 
• carbon-neutral farming;
• environmental assessments;
• CO₂ ground storage dynamics and sustainable forest management;
• aquatic and terrestrial ecology;
• hydraulic and hydrological modeling of watersheds, with a focus on water uses, especially in agriculture;
• the humanities and social sciences: controversies associated with the protection of species in the context of climate change.

For Laurent Buisson, Managing Director of AgroParisTech, “This agreement will enable AgroParisTech to consolidate what is already a well-established partnership, and to leverage the full range of our scientific and engineering skills to address real-world, high-stakes environmental issues, in association with a key player in the energy transition. The questions that come to light will in turn help feed future research conducted at AgroParisTech. Our students and Ph.D. candidates will also find it an ideal place to put the knowledge and skills acquired during their education into practice through R&D activities.”

For Bernard Salha, CTO and Head of R&D at EDF, “This partnership—a first with AgroParisTech—is ideally suited to tackling the formidable challenges that EDF will have to address in the context of the energy transition. The geographical proximity of the Paris-Saclay EDF Lab to AgroParisTech will also generate synergies between researchers and students. This will help strengthen the ties between the research conducted in academia and industry.”