UTC and the Natio­nal Ins­ti­tute for Indus­trial Envi­ron­ments and Asso­ciate Risks (INERIS) , crea­ted a Tea­ching and Research Chair on the theme of mathe­ma­ti­cal model­ling and sys­te­mic bio­lo­gy as appli­cable to pre­dic­tive toxicology.

The Chair of Mathe­ma­ti­cal model­ling and sys­te­mic bio­lo­gy in pre­dic­tive toxi­co­lo­gy, finan­cial­ly sup­por­ted by the UTC Foun­da­tion for a per­iod of 6 years, was set up to deve­lop tea­ching, research and com­mu­ni­ca­tion (PR) acti­vi­ties for enter­prises on their thematics.

The objec­tives assi­gned to this INERIS Chair were numerous:

• To accom­pa­ny indus­trial enter­prises to imple­ment the regu­la­to­ry requi­re­ments of REACH (EU direc­tive). This direc­tive makes indus­trials in che­mi­cal, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and cos­me­tics sec­tors direct­ly res­pon­sible for the assess­ment and mana­ge­ment of risks asso­cia­ted with their che­mi­cal based pro­ducts as well as for pro­vi­ding appro­priate infor­ma­tion to cus­to­mers and users in terms of safety.
• Pre­dic­ting and asses­sing the level of toxi­ci­ty in che­mi­cal pro­ducts, pol­lu­tants and – in gene­ral – all agents that stress the envi­ron­ment (heat, radia­tion, noise …)
• Pro­po­sing alter­na­tives to in vivo ani­mal experimentation
• Deve­lo­ping spe­ci­fic trai­ning courses at engi­neer, Master's and PhD levels

As far as tea­ching is concer­ned, a spe­cial optio­nal course in bio-com­pu­ting sciences was suc­cess­ful­ly laun­ched. Eve­ry year, 25 stu­dents are trai­ned in this emer­ging spe­cial­ty. A dozen or so inter­ven­tions take place each year at UTC and in other French Uni­ver­si­ties. Final­ly, a dozen or so stu­dents were given ini­tial trai­ning in research and the fra­me­work of per­so­nal pro­ject assignments.

Research acti­vi­ties have been rewar­ding per se. Six research scien­tists have been trai­ned at PhD and post-doc­to­ral levels. The UTC repu­ta­tion has been rein­for­ced in the field of sys­te­mic bio­lo­gy, with an ave­rage of 7 papers publi­shed eve­ry year on average.

One of the most inter­es­ting topics on which INERIS and UT have car­ried out joint work relates to net­work model­ling in a Baye­sian context. This is a dif­fi­cult theme but which has impor­tant appli­ca­tions and pre­sents an exci­ting chal­lenges to research scien­tists. The col­la­bo­ra­tion bet­ween INERIS and UTC will be pur­sued, in par­ti­cu­lar with the UTC Com­pu­ter Science and Engi­nee­ring Depart­ment as a key player.

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