The French National Strategy for Research is out
The French National Strategy for Research (FNSR) has just been published (download the French document here). Devised with the expert opinion obtained from the wider scientific and academic community, including the CNRS, the research alliances, the competitiveness clusters and industrial stakeholders, during a public consultation, the FNSR aligns with the European policies for science and innovation and the Horizon 2020 programme, focusing on three axes:
1. Excellent science
2. Industrial leadership
3. Societal challenges
The FNSR identifies 10 societal challenges and outlines 5 action programmes, which will be the priority for the French research bodies and will define the strategic plan of public funding agencies such as ANR.
The 10 societal challenges are:
• Management of resources and adaptation to climate change: including the intelligent monitoring of planet Earth, the sustainable management of natural resources, the evaluation and control of climate and environmental risks, the development of eco- and biotechnologies and the study of the coastline.
• Clean, safe and efficient energy: comprising the dynamic management and multi-scale governance of energy system, energy efficiency, the reduction of the dependence on strategic materials and the search of fossil carbon substitutes.
• Industrial renewal: including the digital economy, green industry, human-centred manufacturing procedures, and design of new materials, sensors and instrumentation.
• Health and well-being: focusing on the multi-scale analysis of diversity and life evolution, the processing and collection of biological data and the establishment of a national network of centres of excellence for research and healthcare.
• Food security and demographic challenge: aiming at the achievement of healthy and sustainable food supply, an integrated approach for productive systems and the production and diversified use of biomass.
• Sustainable cities and transports: creating observatories for cities, new mobility concepts, new tools and technologies to ensure sustainability in urban environments and integrating infrastructures and urban networks for resilience.
• Information and communication society: focusing on the development of 5G network infrastructure, IoT, Big Data and man-machine collaboration.
• Innovative, integrative and adaptive societies: aiming at the study of cultures and integration factors, and their abilities to innovate as well as the exploitation of data to understand the societies and the development of social, cultural and educational innovations.
• Space: building on the French expertise on spatial science, the FNSR encourages the development of new services for Earth observation and Universe exploration, of the telecommunication and navigation sectors, and the defence and security of the territory.
• Freedom and security of European territory, citizens and residents: aiming at the prevention and anticipation of risks and threats, the integrated approach to crisis management and the resilience of security systems.
Five action programmes will be implemented in the following areas:
• Big data: focusing on the research of generalised solutions for the analysis of non-structured data adapted to the use of a wide range of interested parties, the programme will also comprise the establishment of interdisciplinary communities targeting specific challenges, the development of infrastructures for the storage and big data processing and the training of data and knowledge scientists.
• Earth system: Observation, forecast and adaptation: this programme will focus on the conception and development of disruptive technologies for the observation infrastructure and processing of associated data, favouring the development of climate and environmental services and a sustainable food production system with optimal use of biomass through experimentation within living labs.
• Synthetic biology: this programme aims at the establishment of a scientific community and multidisciplinary centres on this subject with a view of favouring the training of researchers and the collection of “omic” (e.g. genomic, proteomic, etc) data for modelling life mechanisms.
• From bench to bedside: this programme will support research projects with a strong potential of fast technology transfer to society and/or industry, thus stimulating health innovation.
• Human culture: this programme will support the development of multidisciplinary platforms, large data infrastructures on the study of human culture and behaviour, research on the influence of human factor on risk management and the transfer of humanities and social science research into the socioeconomic world.