Scientific culture
Making science accessible to all audiences
These actions aim to establish scientific culture as a lever for dialogue, trust, and civic engagement, which is essential for informing debates and strengthening social cohesion in a world marked by information overload and mistrust of knowledge.
1/ The Medrecherche project
The aim is to design new interactive and accessible formats for scientific mediation in order to promote research at events open to the general public. These formats will be accompanied by a program to train researchers and doctoral students in scientific education aimed at the widest possible audience.
2/ Research Night and Science Festival
These two events provide an opportunity to organize challenging, fun, and immersive outreach activities that encourage open and human interaction with researchers. The goal is to strengthen the link between science and society.
3/ Schoolab Engineers
The Schoolab Ingénieurs project is a program that welcomes students into our laboratories and immerses them in our work. It aims to open up research and democratize access to scientific and technical careers for high school students.
4/ Engineering Day – 23 March 2026
La Rotonde, in collaboration with the engineering college, is organising a half-day immersive science event for secondary school students in the region. The programme includes educational activities, demonstrations, meetings and experiments to discover science in action. Through a series of educational activities, secondary school classes will explore three areas of curiosity led by science communicators and attend a scientific conference.
These actions aim to establish scientific culture as a lever for dialogue, trust, and civic engagement, which is essential for informing debates and strengthening social cohesion in a world marked by information overload and mistrust of knowledge.
Past actions
Engineering Day: On April 15, the College of Engineering, with the support of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, organized the first edition of Engineering Day. The second edition is scheduled for March 23, 2026, at the Lyon Auditorium.
A unique event open to all stakeholders in the region: engineers, students, high school students, businesses, local authorities, and citizens. Designed as a space for debate and inspiration, the day was structured around an ambitious three-pronged approach: “Reuse, Reinvent, Regenerate.”
Five panel discussions and scientific mediation workshops punctuated this busy day, which had a clear objective: to put engineering back at the heart of ecological and social transformation, with a deeply territorial approach:
- round tables with experts from the academic and industrial worlds
- participatory workshops
- an inspiring keynote speech by François Gemenne, co-author of the IPCC’s 6th report
The second edition of Engineering Day will be held at the Lyon Auditorium on March 13, 2026.
Based on the same principle as the first day, it will feature four round tables exploring critical issues: (bullet points) mobilizing engineers on major transition issues, managing a scarce resource: water, ethics & AI, and carbon neutrality within companies.
This day will be an opportunity to:
facilitate discussions between experts, companies, and actors in the field to compare points of view.
listen to an inspiring keynote speech by Cyril Dion.
discover an artistic performance by the CNSMD to end the day on a high note.
Find the complete playlist of video recordings on YouTube.
The College of Engineering also participated in the “Demain mais en mieux” (Tomorrow, but better) trade show on February 3 and 4, 2024, in Lyon for a scientific outreach initiative.
“Demain, mais en meiux” invited visitors to take an immersive journey behind the scenes of science, where the world of tomorrow is being prepared. This event brought together major players in fundamental and applied research and large companies. It offered the general public, particularly younger generations, the opportunity to meet engineers and scientists in order to better understand their activities and professions.
The College of Engineering had a stand alongside the Region, Thalès, Airbus, INRAE, ANR, EDF, ITER, INSERM, CEA, CNES, CNRS, Dassault Aviation, and ArianeGroup, among others.
The doctoral students who took part in the speed searching area received training in science communication and popularization at the Rotonde de Saint-Etienne in December and January, ahead of the event. Nearly 650 people attended, mainly families with a majority of young adults.
Our demonstration area offered an experiment in multisensory virtual reality and a presentation of the research carried out for the French Cycling Federation with a view to the 2024 Olympic Games.