“Grenoble has the kind of infrastructure needed to address the societal grand challenges of today and tomorrow.” —Jean Therme, Director of CEA Tech until 2015, and the driving force behind the GIANT alliance.
GIANT’s founding principles:
- Cooperate on societal grand challenges in energy, health, and information and communication technologies
- Create synergies and foster collaboration between member institutes through thematic research programs addressing key use cases
- Leverage urban redevelopment and advances in science to make the GIANT campus a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood with abundant employment opportunities
GIANT was created in 2008 by eight prominent founding members:
Two large research institutes, the CEA (the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) and CNRS (France’s national center for scientific research), representing science and technology research on the GIANT campus.
Three large European instruments and instutites: the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), all based on the European Photon and Neutron Science (EPN) campus.
Three top-tier institutions of higher education: business school Grenoble Ecole de Management, engineering school Grenoble INP – UGA, and Grenoble Alpes University (UGA).
Together, GIANT’s founding partners set common objectives so that they can collectively address societal grand challenges and serve humanity.
GIANT’s strategy and operations are overseen by a governance organization representing all members of the alliance. And, to increase the campus’ impact, GIANT members communicate jointly under the GIANT name, co-authoring position papers for the European Commission, for example.