Grenoble is one of France’s largest college towns, with more than 63,000 students, including 10,000 international students on the GIANT campus.
Students in Grenoble often have opportunities to work with international-caliber research organizations on both basic and applied research topics.
Educational programs at GIANT focus on growth industries like sustainable energy, digital technology, innovation management, health, and biology.
The campus is a living laboratory that offers students a particularly stimulating experience in a unique environment. GIANT is more than just an innovation campus; it also offers an exceptional quality of life. Located in Grenoble, the largest city in the French Alps, GIANT affords easy access to the outdoors, with a wide range of sports and leisure activities just minutes away from downtown.
Education on the GIANT campus
Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble INP-UGA and Grenoble Alpes University (UGA) deliver a variety of degree programs in entrepreneurial innovation, business, engineering, and science. Students from virtually all educational backgrounds come to Grenoble to earn degrees from undergraduate to graduate and PhD.
Digital technology and communication, to support economic, cultural, and social development
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and systems are virtually omnipresent in our day-to-day lives and are crucial to development in all sectors of the economy. Looking ahead, digital technology research will have to drive innovation and address ethical concerns to rise to the major societal challenges over the horizon.
The programs offered by the institutions of higher education at GIANT draw on the latest advances in science and give students the skills they will need to create tomorrow’s information and communication technologies.
For science and technology, engineering school Grenoble INP – Phelma offers a broad range of programs in applied physics, physics and chemistry of new materials, electrochemistry, processes, nanoscience, electronics, and information management, including sound and image processing.
Business school Grenoble Ecole de Management delivers programs in innovation management that focus on the skills needed to successfully implement innovations inside companies.
GIANT members schools all familiarize students with advanced topics and prepare them for successful careers. Over the coming decades, development and entrepreneurship will be driven by information and communication technologies.
The “GIANT effect”: The Grenoble area is home to more than 300 ICT-oriented tech companies, including market leaders like STMicroelectronics, Cap Gemini, and Soitec. This gives students at GIANT campus schools opportunities to work with these and other companies.
The curricula offered at GIANT schools often include access to ICT research facilities on campus. These schools also work together on their admissions strategies to attract top candidates from France and around the world. Grenoble has carved out a reputation for excellence in digital technology research and innovation backed by close partnerships between research and business. Students at GIANT campus schools benefit from this unique model.
Energy and sustainability, to build a desirable future
Our planet is facing some significant and pressing energy challenges. If we are to lower carbon dioxide emissions, invent sustainable energy sources and systems, and develop cleaner buildings and production capabilities, we will need new innovation processes and methods.
Increasing awareness of the irreparable damage caused by the earth’s—now dwindling—fossil fuels has spurred scientists around the globe to investigate more ecologically- and economically-viable solutions, in a race against the clock.
Academic programs at GIANT include courses on energy production, storage, and distribution to prepare tomorrow’s engineers and business leaders for a new energy future. Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble INP, and Grenoble Alpes University inculcate their students with a big-picture approach to these challenges, giving them the technical competencies they will need, but also honing their ability to grapple with the environmental and societal issues inherent to energy and sustainability.
GIANT students are often given opportunities to use state-of-the-art facilities:
- Facilities available to members of the Carnot Institute (CEA, CNRS, Grenoble INP, and UGA labs)
- Physical characterization laboratories and equipment (ESRF, ILL, EMBL, CNRS-Institut Néel, Grenoble INP-LMGP, the MINATEC nanocharacterization platform)
- Research equipment at the crossroads of micro and nanotechnology at MINATEC, and software and smart systems resources through Minalogic.
The “GIANT effect”: Business school Grenoble Ecole de Management and engineering school Grenoble INP joined forces to create the Masters in Energy Management and Marketing program in conjunction with UGA, the Tenerrdis energy cluster, and CNRS (France’s national center for scientific research). The demanding curriculum addresses energy through multiple lenses and disciplines, and gives students the technical and managerial competencies they will need to succeed in their future careers.
Health, life science, and biology, to invent tomorrow’s medicine and preserve life
Medicine and biology—from science to tech—have a role to play in solving some crucial problems facing society today and over the next several decades: The world’s population is expected to double in 50 years; people are living longer, which means that populations in developed nations will be getting older; emerging and developing nations will be dealing with large-scale public health problems, and the world will have to face new global pandemics.
GIANT offers students seeking to deepen their knowledge of these issues a wide range of specialized programs in the life sciences, biology, and health. Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble INP, and Grenoble Alpes University offer a variety of programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. All three of these schools have strong ties to the tech infrastructure and research networks on the GIANT campus.
The “GIANT effect”: Grenoble Alpes University is one of the top-ranked schools in France for science, technology, medicine, and public health management. UGA offers undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs in a variety of fields and works actively with 70 labs on the following research areas:
- Earth science and astronomy; environmental and social sciences
- Life and health sciences, chemistry and bioengineering
- Mathematics, information and communication science and technology
- Materials sciences and engineering
UGA works with national and international research labs and institutes, many of which are GIANT members. These partnerships play an important role in the university’s strategy of academic excellence. Students benefit from the opportunity to use advanced research facilities and to interact with high-level experts on a regular basis.
Innovation and technology management and entrepreneurship of the future, to shape tomorrow’s organizations and world
Tomorrow’s world will be complex, high-tech, and digital. Technology will make our existing practices better, of course, but it will also result in totally new economic and organizational paradigms.
Business school Grenoble Ecole de Management, engineering school Grenoble INP, and Grenoble Alpes University, offer a wide range of degree programs in science, engineering, business, and entrepreneurial innovation.
These GIANT partner schools offer degrees from undergraduate to PhD, and many of their programs have been designed in conjunction with companies that have chosen Grenoble to locate their high-tech activities. Students enrolled in business programs at GIANT, for example, have opportunities to work on actual business cases with local startups and other types of companies.
The “GIANT effect”: Grenoble Ecole de Management cut the ribbon on its second campus in January 2020. Located at GIANT, GEM Labs is all about innovation through experimentation. Business leaders and their teams can use this lab to experiment with novel approaches to their business, to expand, and to create value. When a project is set up and a team put together, immersive technologies are used to play with and test potential solutions in realistic scenarios. The idea is to learn, build on that learning, share, and reuse, giving students a unique opportunity to hone their skills through experimentation.