The “France – Arizona Institute for Global Grand Challenges”, inaugurated in April 2021, aims to establish a strategic dialogue with the University of Arizona, a major academic partner of the CNRS, in order to foster large-scale projects around major challenges related to global change.
The objective of this workshop was to pursue, within the framework of the IRC structuration, the reflection on the synergies between the two institutions, around a global issue: “Life & Environments: Into The Unknown”. It was also an opportunity to bring together, for this first year of operation, the Scientific committee of the IRC as well as its External advisory committee, in the presence of Robert C Robbins, President of the University of Arizona and Antoine Petit, CEO of CNRS.
The discussions were structured around three areas of scientific cooperation. Existing collaborations between scientists from the two institutions served as a foundation at the beginning of the workshop, and they quickly emerged as incubators for future projects, designed according to interdisciplinary approaches:
– Integrated Food-Energy-Water Solutions at Scale ;
– Habitability in our future: What Makes A World Fit For Life, and How to Keep it That Way ;
– Preparedness to Planetary Challenges: Climate change, One Health and immunity.
Finally, the workshop was also an opportunity to present national programs related to IRC themes, and on which it should be possible to rely for the implementation of IRC projects: for example, on the French side, the Priority Research Programs and Equipment (PEPR) – notably One Water, Fair-Carbon or Solubiod, and on the American side, the grants and programs of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The three-day workshop ended with a visit to the Ecotron Ile-De-France (CNRS/ENS-PSL) on September 22. The presentation of this experimental research infrastructure in ecology allowed to highlight the complementarity between the CNRS and the University of Arizona, echoing its own experimental environmental complex, Biosphere 2, with which projects are already being launched, notably in the framework of the PhD Joint Programme between our two institutions.
More information on the IRC here
This article is a copy from the CNRS Website / official article here
