Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI)

The CRI experiments and spreads new ways of learning, teaching, conducting research and mobilizing collective intelligence in the fields of life, learning, and digital sciences to tackle world challenges.

Sitting at the crossroads of research and education, the CRI promotes innovative pedagogy by putting the students at the heart of their own learning experience through projects, research, and challenges.

Research @CRI is a Collaboratory at the crossroads of life, learning, and digital sciences, affiliated to Paris Descartes University.

Founded in the spirit of facilitating the transition from closed scientific inquiry to a more open model we aim to transcend barriers between disciplines, science and the society. 

We foster research at crossroads between interdisciplinary life and health sciences, a basic understanding of learning processes and novel education technology/methodology testing and implementation, and digital sciences.

We pursue open, collaborative research projects to tackle the world’s health and education challenges, focusing on the following broad topics, amenable to bridge foundational research and societal impact:

• Open health: from data-rich research to development of frugal software and hardware solutions

• Open synthetic and systems biology: from foundational understanding of living systems to open biotech and open pharma solutions.

• Open learning: from understanding learning to human-machine paradigms

• Open AI: Understanding and shaping current digital transition in the context of learning, health and/or human-machine paradigms.

• Open phronesis: tackling the ethical challenges of our time.

• Our research "collaboratory" can welcome up to 60 students, post-docs and research fellows, staying for periods between 3 months and 5 years.

At the heart of our activities, we host a number of labs developed by the “IIFR -Innovative Institute” for training through research. Our labs advise, design, prototype and produce tools for research projects and innovative pedagogy. 

The CRI also develops educational programs, from pre-school to Ph.D. including lifelong learning, together with the Sorbonne Paris Cité University (Paris Descartes University and Paris Diderot University).

The CRI was founded by François Taddei and Ariel Lindner in 2005 to create an open environment where students, partners, and researchers can collaborate together to build a world where lifelong learning is at the heart of our society.

A wide range of partners accompanies the CRI including the European fund, “les programmes d’investissements d’Avenir” and the town council of Paris.

The Bettencourt Schueller Foundation has been an essential and key supporting partner since the CRI was created.

More info: http://cri-paris.org/