A look back at the 2024 General Assembly

Published on

17 December 2024

From 13 to 15 November 2024, the 2nd PEPR DIADEM General Assembly was held on the Doua campus in Villeurbanne. The event was attended by nearly 200 people in person and 80 remotely!

On Wednesday 13 November, the General Meeting opened with a half-day session open to all in the Capelle amphitheatre: the PEPR DIADEM scientific community, representatives of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR), the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI), the CNRS, the CEA and the ANR, companies’ representatives and the general public.

After a brief introduction by the co-directors, Frédéric Schuster and Mario Maglione, the progress made by the PEPR DIADEM since its launch in June 2022 was presented, including a presentation of the training programme, which will be launched in January 2025, and a progress report on the ‘DIADEM Discovery Hub’, the PEPR DIADEM infrastructure bringing together all the platforms.

The afternoon continued with a presentation of highlights from the FastNano (Yann Leconte), LIBELUL (Christophe Dujardin) and MOFLearning (Christian Serre) targeted projects. As the establishment of a digital infrastructure is a major objective of the DIADEM PEPR, Thierry Deutsch, who is in charge of the work package focused on databases for the DIAMOND targeted project, presented the various data-related issues.

The day ended with a presentation by Franck Tancret, Professor at the Institut des Matériaux de Nantes, on the design of materials using artificial intelligence.

The General Assembly continued on 14 and 15 November at the Double Mixte with two days reserved for PEPR DIADEM participants.

Thursday’s programme included round-table discussions on cross-disciplinary topics such as thin-film synthesis, flow synthesis, high-throughput characterisation, digital metallurgy and additive manufacturing. These sessions generated numerous discussions and enabled inter-project interactions to emerge. Working groups on cross-disciplinary themes will be set up in 2025 to respond to this positive, structuring dynamic and encourage inter-project synergy.

During lunch, a ‘Young Researchers/Engineers’ session was organised on the initiative of a number of engineers and post-doctoral students from the DIAMOND project. The session was a great success, and a number of ideas emerged for facilitating interaction within DIADEM’s community of young researchers and engineers.

The afternoon continued with a progress report on the DIAMOND project, which is responsible for setting up DIADEM’s digital infrastructure. This session provided an opportunity to present the project’s progress and the tools developed to help PEPR project participants access the relevant codes and workflows and build the databases and certain use cases. The discussions highlighted both the needs of the projects and identified the various DIAMOND contacts with whom the DIADEM community is widely invited to get in touch in order to put in place solutions tailored to each individual’s needs.

Day 2 ended with a poster session featuring almost 50 posters and a cocktail reception.

The final day was devoted to the launch of the 17 new projects selected during the 1st Call for Projects of the PEPR DIADEM.

Each coordinator gave a brief presentation of their project to the DIADEM community. The ANR presented the scientific, administrative and financial aspects of the projects. This day therefore enabled 17 launch meetings to be organised simultaneously, a real effort at simplification.

We warmly welcome the 17 new projects to the DIADEM consortium!