Background

Environmental sciences and management are characterised by the amount of knowledge and number of fields involved in satisfactorily resolving the problems they raise. This multidisciplinarity includes numerous elements relating to materials sciences, the natural sciences and the life sciences, and also significant factors associated with the humanities.

Objectives

The goal of the SAGE specialisation is twofold. Firstly, the aim is to give students an in-depth grounding in the biogeochemical processes that govern the quality of aquatic milieus and the way that those milieus interact with regional environments; and secondly, to help them understand and master the instruments of water management, whether technical processes for water collection and treatment or the main water policies implemented in different regions of the world.

This means that there is a special emphasis on the technical multidisciplinarity of the programme (fluid mechanics, chemistry and microbiology), whether students plan to move into research or into fieldwork.

Strengths

The different competencies in the programme are covered by respected teams working in three institutions: Paris Diderot University (Paris 7), Paris-East Créteil University (Paris12) and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech. In some teams, the links between the three institutions are already strongly established through unified research structures, such as LISA between Paris DIDEROT Paris 7 and Paris Est Créteil, or LEESU between Paris-Est Créteil and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech. Reflecting this unified research structure, which already offers a pool of more than 100 permanent academic staff, we award a degree jointly accredited by the three institutions in order to consolidate the links and establish a consistent balance of synergies across all areas of the programme.

Openings

On the one hand, the SAGE programme opens up prospects in research on the biogeochemistry of aquatic systems and in water treatment techniques, and on the other hand largely technical jobs in the water management field.

The laboratories that admit students on the “research” programme directly associated with the SAGE specialty are LEESU (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Paris 12 and ENGREF), LGE (Paris 7, IPGP and CNRS), CEMAGREF (QHAN, Antony) and UMR Sisyphe (CNRS, Paris 6 and EMP). Every year, several PhD students are recruited by each of these teams. However, this is not the only research opening in the SAGE programme. Opportunities exist in particular in the form of CIFRE contracts spanning the Masters programme, industries working in the water sector (EDF, Véolia, Ondéo…) and the research institutions above.

Students on the “vocational” programme are steered towards :

1. Operators of drinking water or wastewater treatment plants, operators of infrastructures and urban greywater treatment systems (alternative techniques) and engineering firms in these fields,
2. Organisations responsible for regional and catchment water management and (water utilities, public institutions, municipalities…) and engineering firms working in these fields.

These opportunities are not restricted to France but can also include employment abroad.