INRAE B. Nicolas (Manipulation sous hotte aspirante)
LPA INRAE-EXCILONE

Creation of the 1st Associated Partnership Laboratory at INRAE: a commitment to co-innovate with Excilone

Faced with the major challenges facing our societies, expectations of research are increasingly high. To respond through innovation to concrete industrial and societal issues, intensifying the interactions of public research with companies is one of the keys. By placing innovation as one of the cornerstones of its strategy for the next 10 years [1], INRAE is launching a new form of collaboration with socio-economic actors at the beginning of 2021.

Partners since 2011 in the field of microgenomics, INRAE and Excilone, a company specialising in image analysis and biomolecule content, had already jointly opened a micro-sample analysis service integrated into the @BRIDGe platform dedicated to the genomics of domestic animals. INRAE and Excilone are thus consolidating their collaboration by jointly committing in 2021 to an Associated Partnership Laboratory (LPA). This form of partnership between a research institute and an industrial partner will make it possible to jointly carry out a research program in which the public laboratory and the private partner, complementary, provide human resources (researchers, engineers or technicians), skills and know-how, and technological equipment. This system is materialized by a joint laboratory agreement. It is flexible to create and evaluate and can be easily dissolved or renewed.

With the creation of this Associated Partnership Laboratory (LPA), INRAE and Excilone are committed to:

  • Define common scientific and technological objectives and share scientific approaches and approaches for mutual enrichment;
  • Enhance their complementarity in accordance with strategic plans or projects;
  • Enable optimal use of skills and material resources by promoting the pooling of equipment;
  • Jointly respond to calls for projects and set up projects to carry out the Research Program.

Joint laboratories at the heart of INRAE's innovation policy

This new form of partnership has several advantages for INRAE and its partner. For INRAE, this will allow the emergence of new research topics and possible access to certain equipment, skills or data from its socio-economic partners. For the partner, this means access to scientific excellence, state-of-the-art equipment and differentiation and competitiveness through innovation. For the two partners, the results of the work may give rise to publications, separately or jointly depending on the subject, but also to joint valuations by filing patents in particular.

This first Partnership Laboratory paves the way for a new form of collaboration that is destined to expand into different research themes within INRAE.

Création du 1er Laboratoire Partenarial Associé à INRAE : un engagement pour co-innover avec Excilone | INRAE