Excellence with passion
ISAE-SUPAERO remains on course in 2021 and prepares its future for 2022 and beyond
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After going through two years of health constraints, ISAE-SUPAERO, like the whole of society, has adapted to continue and develop its activities safely during 2021.
Training, research and innovation activities have been growing compared to the pre-Covid years and the future has been prepared by collectively developing the new Objectives and Performance Contract (COP 2022-26).
Read our 2021 Annual Report!
Increasingly acclaimed training courses
As last year, students continued to choose our courses despite the persistent air transport crisis.
More than 800 high-potential young people were recruited into our various programs in French and English, 40% of whom are foreigners from some 60 countries, thus maintaining, in France, our ranking as the 5th engineering school in the entrance exams.
The ISAE Group’s apprenticeship-based engineering course, opened last year, confirmed its success, by running at full capacity in Toulouse (with a second class of 40% girls) and also by deploying to ISAE-ENSMA in Poitiers.
We have also published 6 courses in English on Coursera, the leading global MOOC platform, which will allow us to promote the quality of our lessons internationally.
Expanding research
Already highlighted by the HCERES audit in 2019, the upscaling of research activity was again confirmed in 2021. As last year, nearly €10 million in new orders, contracts and research chairs were registered and nearly 200 scientific articles were published. That’s twice as many publications as five years ago and four times as many as ten years ago.
Welcoming Innovation
At the heart of the campus, InnovSpace, place of innovation, was able to reopen at the beginning of September 2021. The number of start-ups linked to ISAE-SUPAERO continues to grow, with our Hinfact and U-Space spin-offs, along with companies created by students or alumni such as Diodon Drone, Beyond Aerospace or Ascendance Flight Technology.
Committed to the energy transition
The Horizons Roadmap, validated at the end of 2020, is being vigorously implemented and formalizes the Institute’s strategic commitment to sustainable development, and in particular the ecological transition of aviation. 2021 saw the training offer in this area strengthened, a new phase of the Mermoz hydrogen drone project launched, and the grouping of 8 partners around the Institute for Sustainable Aviation ("ISA") initiative led by ISAE-SUPAERO. The "aviation-climate repository", which summarizes scientific knowledge on the climate impact of aviation, to inform the debate on the future of aviation with a solid factual basis, was published at the beginning of the school year. Finally, thanks to appropriations from the Recovery Plan, major energy improvements to buildings were launched to continue decarbonizing and modernizing the campus.
The COP, an ambition for the next 5 years.
The outcome of the COP, which is coming to an end, highlights the extent to which the Institute’s activities have developed over the past five years, in terms of training, research and innovation. On this basis, the new Objective and Performance Contract, drawn up in consultation with the supervisory authority and the Board of Directors, reformulates the Institute’s raison d’être, confirms its ambition of global leadership in higher education in aerospace engineering, and sets out 4 main objectives, with a new focus on the impact of activities on society and the aerospace sector.
In particular, it plans to continue to implement the Institute’s sustainable development strategy around its three main pillars: contributing through training and research to the ecological transition of the aerospace sector, training students to participate in the citizens’ debate and continuing the decarbonization of the campus.
More generally, it commits the Institute to strengthening its position as an international leader in providing advanced aerospace engineering courses by asserting itself as a major player in civil and military aerospace sector transitions.
Over the course of a once more disrupted year, ISAE-SUPAERO was able to stay the course despite the health and aeronautical crises. It is therefore with confidence that we begin 2022, in a context that should be clarified, and that we mobilize around our raison d’être: "to train high-level scientific, humanistic and innovative engineers around the aerospace challenges, able to master the complexities of the challenges of tomorrow’s world, in order to keep Europe’s aeronautical and space industry and research at the forefront of the world", says Olivier Lesbre, Director General of ISAE-SUPAERO, affirme Olivier Lesbre, Directeur Général de l’ISAE-SUPAERO.
