The Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity in Paris was founded in 2005 as a convivial place at the crossroad of life sciences and exact, natural, cognitive, and social sciences. Today, the CRI offers three degree programs integrated in the Bettencourt curriculum: an undergraduate program (Licence Frontières du Vivant, FdV), a masters program (Interdisciplinary Approaches to Life Sciences, AIV Master), and a doctoral program (Frontiers of Life, Ecole doctorale 474 Frontières du Vivant, FdV). The CRI is dedicated also to host visiting professors, a variety of courses, and many student clubs. The CRI’s main role is to promote new educational techniques and strategies to empower the students to take initiative and develop their own research projects. Mentors, research institutions, private companies, and foundations, such as the Bettencourt Foundation, provide the support for the student-created research projects and activities.
On 19-21, June, 2014 CRI organized a symposium in Paris, France, called „Ideasunrise”, with the motto of ’Come and shake your ideas’, which was the first interdisciplinary symposium organized by undergraduate students for undergraduate students. It was open to all undergraduate students from all disciplines in any school or university, who are involved in a project. The symposium gave them the opportunity to present the fruits of their research, scholarly, or other creative projects. It included projects from all disciplines and encouraged interdisciplinary discussions, allowing students to learn from each other about a broad range of exciting research or engineering topics.
Its objectives were to bring together undergraduate students who are involved in projects and build a community of young dynamic and creative students interested in interdisciplinarity in research or engineering, as well as to recognize and celebrate the exceptional work of undergraduate students through short oral presentations, poster sessions and informal discussions. Students also had the opportunity to pitch and develop a novel project to seek teammates or sponsoring.
In addition, a workshop was organised to help participants to develop meta skills such as public presentation, creativity and brainstorming, visual design and communication, CV and motivation letter writing or teaching.
