CEE Gateways to France

Dr. Arson initiated a new program, called "CEE Gateways to France", to support scientific collaborations between Georgia Tech School of Civil & Environmental Engineering (GT-CEE) and top French engineering programs located in the Paris area. The goal is to sustain long-term international partnerships through regular student internships and faculty visits amongst a core group of scholars from CEE and the partnering French schools. The program helps by collecting research internships proposals, interviewing internship candidates, assisting in visa applications, connecting to accommodation services, organizing social events, proposing follow-up collaborations. Under Dr. Arson's leadership, Memorandums Of Understanding were signed between GT-CEE and Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech (ENPC) in Fall 2012 and then Fall 2019, to facilitate the exchange of graduate students for coursework and not only research. Moreover, Dr. Arson is in contact with the French consulate in Atlanta to discuss possible joint efforts in organizing events to promote research and collaborations with the industry. Procedures to apply and examples of past internship research topics are described in this handbook.

		CEE Gateways to France in June 2013. From left to right: Mr. Igor Koval and Mr. Vinh Pham-Gia (ENPC interns at Georgia Tech), Dr. Chloé Arson, Mr. Nathan Mayercsik (Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, coming back from a 6-week internship at ENPC).

Facts and Figures

• 2 proposals from the National Science Foundation (NSF IRES program) were awarded, in 2013 and in 2019, to support GT student internships in Paris engineering schools.
• 23 internships were funded by the program. Internships were conducted by women ten times and by persons from an ethnic minority five times.
• 1 GT-CEE Ph.D. student was supported by the Mundy Funds to do a research internship at ENPC in Spring 2013 (N. Mayercsik).
• 9 ENPC students have been supported to come to Georgia Tech for a research internship: M. Fleury (2015), I. Koval (2013), S. Lebastard (2015), S. Le Pense (2012), V. Pham-Gia (2013), N. Henry (2014), F. Malfait (2014), G. Pelletier (2014), J. Rozé (2015).
• 2 ENPC collaborators spent a week at GT-CEE with the support of the NSF-IRES grant (Dr. A. Pouya, May 2014 and Dr. S. Brisard, May 2019).
• 2 GT-CEE faculty went to ENPC to work with their collaborator with the support of the NSF-IRES grant (Dr. K. Kurtis, June 2016, and Dr. L. Stewart, Fall 2019).
• 7 CEE faculty members have participated: Drs. Arson, Burns, Dai, Frost, Kurtis, Stewart, Watkins.
• 3 CEE affinity groups have been involved: Geosystems, Structures, Transportation.
• 6 journal papers were published out of collaborations between ENPC and GT-CEE.

Left : N. Mayercsik (GT Ph.D. student at ENPC) using a micro-tomographer at Navier Laboratory. Center: GT group at the international Biot Poromechanics conference, ENPC, July 2017 (left to right: C. Arson, S. Mallett, M. Roozbahani, S. Smith). Right: GT students on a coffee break at ENPC, 2016 (left to right: A. Yi, H. Heindl, L. Burris).