Research news - May / June 2022 #9

Second Doctoral Ceremony for Avignon University

On 17 June 2022, Avignon Université held its second doctorate ceremony on the Hannah Arendt campus. This ceremony was an opportunity for the doctors who defended their thesis in 2020 and 2021 to bring their academic career to a close in a warm atmosphere, after two years without an event.
Around thirty PhDs from the classes of 2020 and 2021 came to this unifying event.

The ceremony began with inaugural speeches by the President of Avignon Université, Philippe Ellerkamp, and the Vice-President of the Board of Governors responsible for the Research Commission, Georges Linarès.

Yezekael Hayel, Director of Doctoral School 536, Magali Rault, Director of the Collège des Études Doctorales (CED) and Johnny Douvinet, Director of Doctoral School 537, presented the young PhD students with their diplomas.

This event was an opportunity to showcase the diversity and excellence of the research carried out by doctoral students in the Avignon Université research laboratories.

As was the case two years ago, this ceremony highlighted the richness and diversity of people's backgrounds through a variety of testimonials: Louise Chassouant (in chemistry), Amandine Rousset (doctoral student in plant extraction, MT180 seconds People's Choice Award) and Esteban Bopp (doctor in geography) were able to talk about their careers as doctoral students in their fields of research. Amandine Rousset presented her thesis in 180 seconds, as she did, to an enthusiastic audience.

The doctors and their families, thesis supervisors and laboratory directors who attended were delighted to be able to take part in the ceremony, which ended with a convivial cocktail party in the university gardens.

June 2022 - Esteban Bopp

Esteban Bopp defended his thesis in geography in Avignon (UMR ESPACE) in 2021. He worked on warning populations of natural and technological hazards.
Now a post-doctoral researcher in Franche-Comté (UMR TheMA), he is studying how individuals perceive and use public and private urban green spaces. 

>> Discover his portrait

May 2022 - Ondine Le Fur

Ondine Le Fur is a doctoral student in geography at the Espace-Dev laboratory. Her research focuses on forest fire risk prevention in France and Australia. She is analysing town and country planning regulations that take into account the vulnerability of inhabited areas on the outskirts of towns to forest fires.

>> Discover his portrait

Upcoming thesis defences

Launch of the Inter-MEDIUS University Research School
(Inter-mediation in the age of digital information and its uses in society)

The Inter-MEDIUS University Research School is structured around four major areas identifying several levels of mediation processes directly linked to digital technology the creation and the mediation cultural control and the decision society. It tackles a wide range of issues involving the many interactions between digital technology, heritage, culture and society.

Associated with eight laboratories and thirteen Masters specialities, EUR Inter-MEDIUS offers Masters and Doctorate students a wide range of courses, an interdisciplinary, research-based training programme. This scheme aims to prepare students for the careers of tomorrow, combining solid skills in a given discipline with an appetite for research, curiosity and an ability to be open to interdisciplinarity.

From the start of the 2022 academic year, as a complement to their subject teaching, students will be able to benefit from cross-disciplinary access to a selection of Masters modules in the following fields: history, geography, data governance, literature, languages, theatre, communication, IT, mathematics.

In the longer term, EUR will propose a new university degree with an international outlookat the crossroads of the digital sciences and the humanities and social sciences. Teaching will take the form of workshops, seminars and research projects, supplemented by laboratory placements.

The Inter-MEDIUS team is currently working on implementing the EUR actions. All the information will be available on a dedicated website, which will soon be online, as well as at the welcome meetings for students at the start of the 2022-2023 academic year.

>> Contact : intermedius@univ-avignon.fr
Didier Josselin - Director of EUR Inter-MEDIUS
Anna Furget-Bretagnon - EUR Inter-MEDIUS Development Support Officer

Avignon University's Open Science Barometer (BSO)

The University Library team is delighted to announce the local launch of the Open Science BarometerThis is an opportunity to highlight the openness of our institution's scientific output.

Widespread open access to scientific publications is one of the main thrusts of the national open science strategy, with the aim of achieving an open access rate of 100 % by 2030.

The Open Science Barometer has been produced by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation since 2019. It is a steering tool that aims to measure the progress of open access and changes in practices in French research. It is not easy to isolate production by institution from the National Barometer, so the local version makes it possible to measure the same progress at university level.

Only publications with a DOI are taken into account, so the list is not exhaustive. The data used comes from cross-referencing several sources (Web of Science, PubMed, HAL, Lens.org and APC payments). As these biases are the same as those used for the National Barometer, the Avignon university version is used to situate the institution.

The raw data was collected in February 2022.

>> All the information on the BU website

[European project] SELMA project stakeholders' meeting at Avignon University

The SELMA (Stream Learning for Multilingual Knowledge Transfer) project, on which the team specialising in Automatic Natural Language Processing at the Laboratoire Informatique d'Avignon (LIA) headed by Yannick Estève is working, aims to build a multilingual multimedia platform.

The European partners met on 7 and 8 June at Avignon University, at the half-way stage of the project, which began in January 2021 and will run until December 2023.

>> Find out more on the project website
>>

Signature of a research collaboration agreement between SEMAXONE and the LIA (Laboratoire Informatique d'Avignon)

SEMAXONE is a start-up developing a real-time physiological information processing device to prevent potential physiological failures in agents carrying out critical tasks. The company is particularly interested in aircraft pilots, for whom its device can alert the pilot or modify flight conditions by acting on the oxygen source.

SEMAXONE wanted to develop its skills in the field of voice analysis and very early on approached the Avignon Computer Laboratory (LIA) at Avignon University (AU). SEMAXONE relied on this collaboration and on various partners such as AirLiquide to build the project "Design of innovative digital tools based on algorithms combining voice analysis with real-time physiological data to detect changes in the physiological state of pilots operating in difficult environments".acronym "SkyPhyslA (project submitted and selected as part of the Readynov 2019-2021 AAP). This project began in April 2022 and has a duration of 24 months.

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"Yes We Code", a day at CERI for 120 schoolchildren

On Monday 30 May, CERI welcomed 124 pupils from 9 secondary schools in the Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône departments for the end-of-year "Yes We Code! day," a national initiative run by the CGénial Foundation, which aims to help them develop digital projects thanks to an educational kit and support from teachers throughout the year, with the backing of the Direction Régionale au Numérique Educatif.

>>

>> "Cancers: pesticides, asbestos, pollution... When work kills", La Provence
>>  "Yes we code: Vaucluse secondary school pupils compete for the best digital project", l'Echo du mardi
>> "Avignon: around a hundred secondary school pupils get a taste of the digital sciences", le Dauphiné

To see more articles, go to your space Europresse (University Library website)

21 June: Regional day on "health and climate change in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur" at Avignon University

The Groupe régional d'experts sur le climat en Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (GREC-SUD), with financial support from the Agence régionale de santé (ARS PACA) and in partnership with Avignon University, is organising a theme day on "Health and climate change". The aim of this event, which is open to all, is to identify the effects of climate change on human health and propose solutions to protect the population.

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From 20 to 24 June: PHENOLOGY 2022 - At the crossroads
 

Avignon University, Campus Hannah Arendt

>> Information

From 27 June to 1 July: TALN⊕RÉCITAL 2022

Organised jointly by the Laboratoire d'Informatique et Systèmes (LIS) and the Laboratoire Informatique d'Avignon (LIA) under the aegis of the Association pour le Traitement Automatique des Langues (ATALA).

>> More information

4, 5, 6 July: TISS1, Tersys - Implanteus Summer School

4, 5 and 6 July - SFR Tersys and EUR Implanteus are joining forces to organise their first symposium on 5 and 6 July 2022. It will be preceded on 4 July by the IMBL scientific day.
Avignon University, Jean-Henri Fabre Campus

>> More information