Presentation
Mission
The University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (USIAS) was created in 2012 and supports original, potentially path-breaking research in order to enable reflection and synthesis at the highest level. Its activities include, amonsgst others, the attribution of Fellowships and the organisation of events and conferences. USIAS covers all scientific fields and offers a highly multi-disciplinary environment conducive to new insights and ideas.
10-15 Fellows are selected each year via a call for proposals. USIAS provides the opportunity to these excellent researchers to explore new ideas and approaches, to deepen or change the direction of their research, to broaden their horizon and apply their knowledge in new areas.
The Institute aims to be a place of intellectual innovation, in which researchers from different disciplines and backgrounds interact with each other and with the wider community of the University of Strasbourg.
USIAS is a flagship project of the Excellence Initiative (IdEx) of the University of Strasbourg, and is part of the French national programme Investments for the Future (Investissements d'Avenir), currently France 2030.
Strasbourg and its university
Strasbourg is the seat of important European institutions such as the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, and the European Parliament. Its historic city centre with the thousand-year old Cathédrale Notre-Dame is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site, as is the late 19th century Neustadt area adjacent to the central campus of the University of Strasbourg.
The University of Strasbourg, traces its history back to 1621. Strasbourg has been home to historic intellectual figures such as Johannes Gutenberg, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Louis Pasteur, Paul Ehrlich, Georg Simmel, Albert Schweitzer, Marguerite Perey and Marc Bloch. The university is part of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) and is one of three universities in France that has been awarded a permanent excellence status in the context of the IdEx. It currently counts four Nobel laureates, three of whom hold a USIAS Chair (Jules Hoffmann, Jean-Merie Lehn and Jean-Pierre Sauvage).
The University of Strasbourg has a strong commitment to technology and knowledge transfer; at the national level it is ranked second in lifelong learning, and was the first in France to set up a “proof of concept” fund to facilitate transfer to proactively foster collaboration between public research and private R&D.
Strong relationships with partners in the business world form another asset: the university is for instance a founding member of the French-German-Swiss Biovalley cluster, one of the most important clusters in biotechnologies and health in Europe, which has created more than 4 000 jobs and 75 companies since 2005.
Located on a historically turbulent frontier, the university is at the heart of Europe, blending French and German cultural influences. Internationalisation forms an integral part of its culture, as 12% of its lecturers and researchers are foreign nationals, and around 20% of graduates are from other countries.
