IRP iNOVE

iNOVE is a Franco-American international research programme (IRP) on the development of innovations for a sustainable environment.

The creation of the IRP iNOVE aims to promote a permanent, high-profile international relationship between three French laboratories (CEREGE, IMBE and LEMIRE-BIAM) and the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department of Duke University (North Carolina, USA) for research, training and teaching.

iNOVE provides a formal, interdisciplinary framework for exchanges between France and the United States, particularly for visiting researchers, post-doctoral fellows and postgraduate and master's students.

The creation of iNOVE marks the evolution of a collaboration that began more than 20 years ago. The aim of iNOVE is to extend international leadership beyond what the partners have already built around the environmental risks associated with nanotechnologies (CEINT centre in the United States and iCEINT consortium in France) towards the development of innovations for a sustainable environment.

There is no doubt that human activities (industry, agriculture, energy, etc.) will have a long-term impact on the various compartments of our environment (water, soil, atmosphere and biota). The sustainable preservation of resources, as well as human and environmental health, will remain a major scientific challenge over the coming decades.

At iNOVE we propose to carry out research to act on both :

- Downstream of human activities, through better characterisation of environmental pollution and its impacts (e.g. multi-contamination, multi-contamination, exposome) and through the development of new technologies to treat contaminants (e.g. nano-, biotechnologies).

- Upstream of human activities, by developing new materials that are safer for people and the environment throughout their life cycle. Emphasis will be placed on waste recycling (e.g. water reuse, extraction of critical metals).

These two avenues will benefit from the development of environmental databases and innovative modelling tools, in order to improve the quality of the environment in response to societal problems.