On March 18, 2025, the ECE inaugurated its Intelligence Lab at its Paris Eiffel campus, in the presence of numerous figures from the academic, political, and industrial worlds.
Pioneering AI in France, this new educational, innovation, and research center marks a key step in the school’s commitment to a sovereign, frugal, and open AI.
Designed as a “OPEN to the fourth power” hub – OPEN education, OPEN research, OPEN innovation, OPEN source – the Intelligence Lab is part of a broad and open collaboration dynamic with schools, laboratories, companies, and communities. It benefits from the support of the OMNES Education Group and five strategic industrial partners: AMETRA ENGINEERING, KAYDAN, MBDA, ORANO, and RENAULT.
A rich and inspiring program
During this inauguration evening, José Milano, Executive President of the OMNES Education group, Nelly Garnier, Regional Councillor of Île-de-France, and Henri Jozefowicz, District Councillor at the 15th Arrondissement City Hall, kicked off the festivities with engaging speeches in favor of innovation and digital sovereignty.
The highlights of the event included:
- Interactive workshops and guided tours of the Lab.
- The presentation of the Lab by François Stephan, General Director of ECE, and Gérard Réus, Vice Dean and head of the Intelligence Lab.
- The lighting up of the project “Search Lite” by MBDA, one of the first French open-source visual Knowledge Management tools, designed in collaboration with students from the Defense & Technology major.
- A round table led by students, featuring demonstrations of concrete projects in generative AI and pitches from student startups.
A pedagogy focused on practice and sovereignty
The Intelligence Lab embodies the “learning by doing” philosophy of ECE. It provides students with cutting-edge technical resources (GPU bay, access to high-performance cloud resources with Exaion/EDF), and project-based teaching serving concrete use cases in strategic sectors (defense, energy, mobility…).
Already recognized for its excellence, the Intelligence Lab is behind the LLM models “Triomphant-ECE-TW3”, and SLM “ECE-PRYMMAL”, both ranked Top 1 globally on Hugging Face in their categories.
A place to cross expertise
The Intelligence Lab promotes cross-disciplinary and collaborative approaches. It allows students from different specializations of the school and other engineering schools to cooperate on common projects proposed by business partners and public organizations.
A concrete way to prepare future engineers for the multi-disciplinary challenges of the professional world.
Students and generative AI: proof by example
A highlight of the evening: a round table led by ECE students, showcasing their projects in generative AI. Accompanied by Isna Kimbembe, head of the CReATE Major, they shared their vision, their experiments, and presented several promising prototypes in fields as diverse as aeronautics, defense, image analysis, and AI for intranets and user interfaces.
Projects like GenIA, LIGTA, and Wardiere Inc. illustrated the potential of the Intelligence Lab as a catalyst for talents and entrepreneurial initiatives.
A concrete immersion through demonstrations and workshops
The evening continued in a friendly atmosphere with a networking cocktail and demonstration workshops. Participants were able to directly test the students’ innovations, discover the Lab’s equipment (GPU rack, Exaion/EDF cloud architecture), and engage with project leaders during guided tours in small groups.
ECE, an accelerator of sovereign and responsible AI
The Intelligence Lab is driven by a strong commitment: to train the engineers and professionals of tomorrow in a sovereign, ethical, frugal, and controlled AI, in synergy with the strategic needs of France and Europe. It addresses a wide audience – students, teachers, researchers, businesses, local authorities – and calls for collaboration to build together a network of “Fab IA”, the “Fab Labs of AI”.
