Carnot organisation
The Carnot organisation promotes innovation, technology transfer
and partnership between public laboratories and industrial actors. It
gathers public research institutions called "Institut Carnot" which
have been selected according to their ability to collaborate efficiently
with socioeconomic partners and, more particularly, with
enterprises. It reinforces the visibility of these institutions and it
grants them extra financial support in order to help them in growing
up their scientific and technological knowledge, and to develop and
to use the same professionalism standards for their partnership
research1 activity.
Carnot is inspired by successful experiences already existing in different European countries. It aims to
increase the French technological research visibility, giving every Carnot Institute a common image of
competency, efficiency, professionalism and partnership research involvement.
The Carnot label is a new brand which is given to research laboratories structures for a renewable four
years period. It results of a severe selection procedure driven by the French National Research Agency
(ANR) for the Minister in charge of higher education and research. The selected research structures must
satisfy a set of criteria such as their partnership research activity rate, their scientific excellence level or the
internal organisation and management they are able to set up, in order to provide their socioeconomic
partners with high quality answers to any request.
Each Carnot Institute receives a financial support from the French National Research Agency (ANR). This
support calculation is based on the Carnot institutes partnership research incomes performed during the
previous year with socioeconomic partners. These extra financial means allow them to finance actions
which participate to the great objectives they are involved in as Carnot Institutes: renewal of scientific and
technological knowledge, improvement of professionalism, development of partnership research, integration
within the Carnot organisation, aso. The label renewal depends on the achievement of these main
objectives and on the respect of the Carnot's chart.
Carnot figures
20 Carnot Institutes are currently running since 2006 and 13 new ones have become Carnot in March 2007.
They cover many technological domains, such as micro and nanotechnologies, information communications
technologies, ecosystems and earth sciences, energy, materials and mechanics, chemistry, life sciences.
- 12 600 permanent researchers and over 5 900 PhD students,
- 1 290 M global annual budget,
- 200 M coming from research in partnership with industry, of which 35 M from SMEs,
- 60 M financial support Carnot planned in 2007.
1 Within the Carnot organisation, a partnership research activity is a research activity (see the official definition of the European
Union JOCE 28/02/2004 L 63/23) developed in partnership with actors from the economical world, answering their research
needs. Such a partnership includes a real financial participation of these actors and their implications in terms of functional
definitions and possibly direct participations to the research projects.
Carnot Institutes managers with M. François Goulard, French Minister of high education and research Vannes 1st of December 2006
AICarnot : "Association des Instituts Carnot »
In order to create a real dynamic and to take completely profit of their common engagement in favour of
partnership research and innovation, the Carnot Institutes have created a federative structure called
"Association des Instituts Carnot" or "AICarnot". Each Carnot Institute is a member of AICarnot.
"AICarnot aims to contribute, while respecting subsidiary principle, to the development of a high quality
partnership research through actions such as:
· improving the professionalism of research laboratories involved in partnership research,
· promoting the visibility of French partnership research at the regional, national, European and
worldwide levels, and the access to partnership research by the socioeconomic actors,
· promoting the collective actions between the Association members,
· establishing deep relationship with the French public authorities and the European instances."
This federative level leads the animation and the integration of the whole Carnot organisation. It drives
common actions such as internal and external communication at the national and the international levels,
elaboration of databases gathering the competencies of Carnot laboratories, creation of an entry point for
the orientation of new customers/partners, support to the set-up of new multidisciplinary projects, support
and help for the elaboration and the diffusion of best practices, market studies and prospective analyses,
general interest studies for members, support for intellectual property questions, lobbying with public
authorities, participation to every institution involved in the Carnot activity spectrum, aso.
Note that the resources of the AICarnot come mainly from the Carnot Institutes themselves, but also from
ANR to finance a few specific collective actions.
President : Joachim RAMS
General Manager of SERAM and Industrial partnership Manager of ENSAM
Vice-President : Jean-Frédéric CLERC
Prospective, Strategy and Evaluation Manager for Technological Research at CEA
General Manager : Alain DUPREY
Association des Instituts Carnot
151, Boulevard de l'Hôpital - 75013 - Paris - France
Tél. : +33 (0)1 44 06 09 00 - Fax. : +33 (0)1 44 06 09 09 - www.instituts-carnot.eu