Supélec is an institution having a private (or association) status. However, it is entitled to negotiate a 4-year contract with the French government. Consequently, Supélec must live up to the high standards of State-funded research, whose priority is academics and thus routinely evaluated by AERES (Agence d’Evaluation de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Superieur – Higher Education Research Evaluation Board). It must also promote company-sponsored research, since one of the terms of this 4-year contract requires that Supélec self-finance 50% of its budget (current budget, that is including salaries - revenues generated from research cover up to half of these funds). Indeed, this represents a double challenge that Supélec intends to meet thanks to a firm desire to deepen its roots within the French higher learning system while ensuring the sustainable growth of a mixed economy model.

Societal role

Supélec wishes to assure optimal continuity between long-term research and ensuing research partnerships (which interact with the socio-economic world). In fact, long-term research alone does not directly serve society, just as research partnerships alone do not enable us to prepare well for the future. To promote new ideas, researchers of Engineering Schools must be familiar with both the needs and trends of society.

Scientific role

Research conducted in an Engineering School strives to place the accent on strong ties between education and research, on one hand, and the link between abstract fields and applications on the other.

These abstract fields (for ex. Systems Sciences) lie at the very heart of Supélec’s scientific strategy.

In fact, Systems Sciences are considered the body of knowledge that allows anyone to analyze, design and even carry out modeling of multi-technological, multi-physical, and multi-scale systems using information- and energy-based technologies. (see figure below).