partners for innovation and transfer

International

More than 50% of LSE publications in 2019 are the result of international partnership with co-authors from 12 European countries including 10 EU members and 14 countries outside Europe on all continents. Among partners outside Europe, the LSE has established intense links with its two strongest partners, the Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Control and Remediation Technology at Sun Yat-Sen University (China) and the Center for Mined Land Rehabilitation (CMLR) from the University of Queensland (Australia). An International Associated Laboratory (LIA) “ECOLAND” was created in December 2015 (UL-INRAE-SYSU) with the first partner and LSE is a core member of the newly created International Research Partnership (IRP) project between LABEX Resources21 and the second one. In 5 years, these two collaborations have made it possible to carry out large-scale projects in the field of management and optimization of ecosystem services in degraded urban and mining soils (rare earths, nickel) resulting in more than 10 co-supervised PhDs and several post-docs. These collaborations are in the core activity of LABEX Resources21, which has allowed the University of Lorraine to reach the 11th worldwide rank in the field of mineral resources and mining engineering.

The other partners of the LSE reinforce this research dynamic around the two international laboratories and position the LSE as one of the world leading institutions in research on ecosystem services provided by urban soils (SUITMA networks) as well as on agromining for metals.

Europe

For decades, the LSE has been able to forge solid relationships with scientific partners across Europe, thus forming several networks on its two main themes, urban soils and phytoremediation of contaminated soils. This strategy has resulted in the success of three European projects since 2016: Agronickel (FACCE-JPI), LIFE-AGROMINE (LIFE) and BUILD (Erasmus + Knowledge Alliance). The LSE fully coordinates the first two and is the scientific coordinator of the third one, which is an educational project involving its research skills of in order to develop innovative educational methods. All these projects involve spin-off companies from LSE, Econick, Microhumus and Sol &co.

Among the European partners of the LSE, the most significant are: Instituto de Investigaciones Agrobiológicas de Galicia –CSIC (Spain); Universität für Bodenkunde (Austria); International Hellenic University (Greece); Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium); Technische Universität Berlin (Allemagne); EPFL, Lausanne (Switzerland); WU, Vienna (Austria); IAAC, Barcelona (Spain); Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy).

France

The national positioning of LSE stems from the objectives described for the three thematic research axes developed in our scientific strategy.

From the point of view of the object, very few research units are developing their research on highly anthropized to extreme soils (e.g. Technosols) in France, a subject on which the LSE has been a pioneer for almost 30 years. LSE then mainly develops partnerships within the URBASOL network (https://urbasol.agrocampus-ouest.fr) which it co-leads. URBASOL is envisioned as a national collective preferentially dedicated to the study of urban soils within the larger perimeter of SUITMA (Soils of Urban, Industrial, Traffic, Mining and Military Areas - working group of the International Union of Soil Sciences - IUSS).

In the field of soil-plant-organism interactions, LSE complements other INRAE units, in particular BEF, ISPA, LAE and ECOSYS. In the field of phytomanagement of polluted sites and soils, we have initiated these approaches for more than 30 years and have acquired knowledge and skills on both phytoextraction and rhizoattenuation. Through the GISFI, LSE is in strong partnership interactions with BRGM and Ineris.

The objective of the network of national partners of LSE is essentially to promote an integrated approach of the actions carried out by the actors of research dedicated to highly anthropized soils and to create favorable conditions for the development of future collaborative projects.

The Laboratoire Sols et Environnement conducts applied research. Thus, part of our work is done in partnership with institutional structures (e.g. public bodies, technical centres) and companies (e.g. industrialists, project managers, consultants) through different funding programs (i.e. LIFE, ERA-NET, ANR, ADEME). In addition, via our transfer centre GISFItech-PROGEPI, we provide R&D solutions for pilot-scale application, consultancy and expertise through industrial contracts (e.g. Arcelor-Mittal, SNCF). Lastly, the research activities of the LSE gave rise to 3 start-ups: Microhumus (Soil and environment consulting and engineering), Econick (Biotechnologies to produce ecoresponsible metals from plants) and Sol &Co (Urbanism and soil consulting).