UGA international

The Grenoble-Swansea Strategic Partnership originated as a research collaboration to develop a Franco-Welsh alliance in the areas of nanoscience, energy and ageing which was supported by the French Embassy and Welsh Government.

Since then Swansea academics have collaborated with Grenoble academics in a range of disciplines including Artificial Intelligence, Biosciences, Computer Science, Engineering, Human and Health Sciences, Law, Medicine, Mathematics, Physics and Sports Science.

Research collaboration remains at the heart of the strategic partnership with:

• Regular programmes of focused visits to initiate and expand relationships
• Dedicated staff employed by both Swansea and Grenoble to provide support at project inception and cross-institutional linkages

The result has been a multi-disciplinary academic collaboration with world-leading academics working together to combine research synergies and complementary expertise to deliver new research projects, joint grant applications, new academic networks, joint conferences, conference papers and co-authored publications.

Some examples of collaboration

Hundreds of academics have engaged with the Grenoble-Swansea Strategic Partnership resulting in joint research in multiple subject areas, including:

• Pr Tim Claypole (College of Engineering, Swansea), advanced materials and printing and coating collaboration with PAGORA, Pr Isabelle Desloges (Grenoble INP Institute of Engineering).
• Pr Stuart Macdonald (Law and Criminology, Swansea) and Dr Bannelier-Christakis and Pr Théodore Christakis (Faculty of Law, CESICE Grenoble) collaborating on terrorists’ use of the internet and cyber surveillance.
• Pr Sinead Brophy (Swansea University Medical School), Big Data Health research with Thierry Chevalier (IMAG, Grenoble Teaching Hospital).
• Pr Andrew Barron (College of Engineering, Swansea): Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI) project with Institut des Sciences de la Terre (ISTerre) in Grenoble
• Pr Luca Borger (College of Science, Swansea): alpine studies project on impact of climate change with ISTerre & the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data systems

Academics from Swansea and Grenoble have worked together to develop the Grenoble-Swansea Centre for AI (GoSCAI).
GoSCAI is a joint human-centred AI and data research centre which aims to create a world-leading community that drives advances in data and intelligence based systems by taking a “people-first” approach. The focus of the centre is AI that will benefit humans, society, and the environment.
GoSCAI will enable to develop projects on key themes such as:

• Core AI research for the benefit of human, society and/or environment.
• AI and the environment
• AI in context of Industry 4.0
• AI within the health domain

Resilience

A new project between Swansea and Grenoble aims to develop a cluster of collaborations around the theme of resilience, with a specific focus on environmental resilience, resilient societies, resilient organisations, and resilient infrastructure and sustainable cities.
The project commenced with a workshop which brought together academics from both universities to identify common interests, identify funding opportunities and prepare joint grant applications.

The resilience theme provides researchers from across multiple disciplines with an opportunity to come together to tackle some of the key issues arising from rapidly changing economic, social, and natural environments as well those that have been raised by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Recent publications

• The positive association between perceived parental responsiveness and self-esteem, anxiety, and thriving among youth rugby players: a multigroup analysis
• The spatial scaling of food web structure across European biogeographical regions
• A Monte Carlo intercomparison of peak-to-valley dose ratios and output factors for microbeam radiation therapy
• Cu isotope ratios are meaningful in ovarian cancer diagnosis