Science in the Midwest
Table des matières
The Chicago Office covers the area called the "Corn belt," or "world’s bread basket." Midwestern economy is driven by its farming (1/3 of the American production) and food production (40% of the American DNP, with such companies as Cargill, ADM, Conagra) ; but it is also driven by metallurgy, and by the automobile, electronic and pharmaceutical industries. Many large bioscience companies are located in the Midwest: Monsanto, Pioneer, Abbott, Baxter, Lilly, etc.).
In the Midwest, R&D mostly takes place in the laboratories of private companies, within public or private universities, and in national laboratories or USDA laboratories.
The Midwest boasts many universities : about 40 colleges and universities in Illinois only.
Their characteristics :
- Many are land-grant universities (ie granted with state lands at their foundation) : Iowa State University, University of Missouri at Columbia, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Purdue University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Michigan State University,…
- the quality of the universities’ schools of engineering and agriculture is world-class, as is the quality of their biotechnological centers and medical schools
- their role in regional economic development and in technology transfer, the efficiency of each college’s "career services", and the importance of continuing and distance education attest to the universities’ close relationship with their region’s economic sector.
French American partnerships 
Our office is especially involved with :
France Chicago Center at the University of Chicago
The France Chicago Center is a University of Chicago-based interdisciplinary organization with a two-fold mission of: 1) facilitating, promoting, and fostering stronger ties between University of Chicago students and researchers and their colleagues in France; and 2) increasing awareness within the University of Chicago community of French culture, art, and thought. The France Chicago Center was created in April of 2001 when various individuals, corporations and private foundations came together to match a one million-dollar grant from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
French Interdisciplinary Group (FIG), Northwestern University at Northwestern University
The French Interdisciplinary Group (FIG), founded in 1996, is one of a dozen interdisciplinary centers, or centres d’excellence, supported by the French government in the United States. FIG’s activities fall into three categories. First, it contributes to intellectual life on campus by supporting presentations, seminars, and colloquia on French or francophone studies, on French scholarship, and presentations by French visitors in all disciplines, from the humanities to the sciences. Second, it supports graduate student research. Third, it works to develop existing partnerships with French institutions of higher education and research and create new ones.
Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies at the University of Wisconsin -Madison
The Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies (CIFS) at UW-Madison was formally established in the year 2000 to advance the study of French in all domains. The Center’s mission was defined to take advantage of existing synergies across the university, with industry, with the private sector, and with the general public in Wisconsin and beyond, and to work in cooperation with the network of Centres pluridisciplinaires, privileged partners with the French Cultural Service in higher education. Creation of CIFS recognized long-standing ties between the Department of French and Italian and other departments and programs at the UW in the humanities, the social sciences, business, education, law, the arts and, increasingly, medicine and the life sciences, as well as outreach programs for teachers, business and government professionals.
Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
The role of our office is to take advantage of the numerous ties between France and UIUC in agronomy and engineering to develop this center.