2023-11-21 09:44:12
In 2017, the Laboratory of planetology and geosciences (LPG – Nantes University – University of Angers – CNRS) creates with its research partners the consortium GeoPlaNet. The objective: to encourage the mobility of young researchers within the network. “But not just the researchers, the students too!” underlines Sabrina Carpy, project coordinator, teacher in the physics department of the UFR Sciences et Techniques of Nantes University and researcher at LPG. “We already had in mind the establishment of a master’s degree to train the new generation of experts in planetary sciences”.
The consortium brings together prestigious partners around the world. Among them, the universities of Coimbra (Portugal) and Chieti-Pescara (Italy), each offer a master’s degree in geosciences with different disciplines: geophysics, astrophysics and data processing in Portugal and geology, cartography and terrestrial analogues in Italy. At Nantes University, the existing master’s degree is dedicated “inside and on the surface of the Earth and other planets”.
An international and interdisciplinary master’s degree
This complementarity corresponds to the ambition of the consortium: offer an international and interdisciplinary master’s degree in planetary geosciences, to train experts capable of engaging in space missions. “Around the Earth, the Moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter or Saturn: all these missions need knowledge in geology, geophysics, geochemistry… and skills in observation, processing and analysis of data, development of new tools, modeling”. This interdisciplinarity is also found in the profile of the twenty students who joined the master’s degree in 2023 following a degree in physics, geology or even Earth and Universe sciences. “Some even already have experience in processing satellite data”.
The four semesters Master GeoPlaNExT IMPG take place successively in Portugal, in Italy, in France in Nantes, then in internship at one of the members of the consortium, to create the link between teaching and research. This link is also expressed through the organization of thematic stays within GeoPlaNet: “students benefit from conferences, field camps, visits to space agencies, etc. in which private companies also participate: they thus discover new practices and cultivate their employability”.
An Erasmus Mundus label
In September 2023, the master’s degree welcomed eighteen students, two-thirds of whom come from non-European countries. And it’s no coincidence… The program is labeled Erasmus Munduswhich gives it international visibility and allows students to benefit from a scholarship. “We want give students from all over the world a chance and attract the best talents to Europe“. Disciplinary, social, cultural, linguistic diversity… is important for those initiating the master’s degree. “It is a factor of openness and exchange, two essential postures in the world of research as in the private sector”. Because if most students aim to pursue a doctorate, they will in any case have acquired skills in data processing, advanced technologies and imaging… which will give them access to sectors other than space in the industry of the future.
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