Education and Training

The LCS plays an active role in undergraduate and postgraduate programs at theUniversité de Caen Normandie, and in chemical engineering courses atENSICAEN. LCS teaching staff are involved in the “Chemistry” Master’s program and are responsible for the “CED2: Catalysis, Environment and Sustainable Development” pathway. Doctoral training takes place within the PSIME Doctoral School, which the laboratory joined on January 1, 2022.

Involved in professional training, every three years the LCS organizes a school on in situ and operando spectroscopy: “Spectrocat”. Its teaching and research staff also run a number of international training programs.

The Master’s degree in Chemistry at the University of Caen provides students with a solid grounding in chemistry and related sciences, covering a broad spectrum from molecular chemistry to catalysis and analytical spectroscopy.

The first year of the Master’s program enables each student to follow a path that corresponds to his or her plans, and prepares him or her for one of the four paths offered in the second year. In M1, the two courses are “Chemistry” and “Materials Science”. In M2, there are three research-oriented courses: “Organic Chemistry and Interfaces”, “Catalysis, Environment and Sustainable Development” (CED2) and “Materials, Nanosciences and Energy” (MANE). A fourth course is for professional purposes: “Industrial Environment Control”.

The objectives of the “Catalysis, Environment and Sustainable Development” (CED) pathway are to₂) are to prepare students for post-graduate studies in the fields of catalysis for the environment and sustainable development, and applied spectroscopy, as well as for any professional activity compatible with a Bac + 5 degree in the same sectors. Specific courses will provide the fundamentals of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, with an introduction to major processes. Other courses will focus on fuels, energy, biomass recovery, petrochemicals, refining and environmental protection, which are specialties of the LCS, one of the research laboratories on which this course is based.

On January 1, 2017, the LCS joined the PSIME Doctoral School (Physics, Engineering Sciences, Materials, Energy).

The aim of the ED PSIME is to train specialist PhDs capable of leading high-level scientific projects in conjunction with regional scientific forces:

Physics, Nuclear physics and materials
Chemistry, Solid State Chemistry, Process Engineering, Earth Sciences
Energy, Mechanics, Optics, Electronics, Engineering Sciences

The^5th SPECTROCAT international seminar (SPECTROCAT 2022) was held from June 27 to July 1, 2022 at ENSICAEN and the University of Caen-Normandie (Campus II). Spectrocat 2022 was a great success, with 44 participants from outside the laboratory, including 6 engineers from industry, and 15 speakers (including 2 from industry). The vast majority of participants came from foreign institutions (90%) in Europe (Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Romania), the Near and Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Israel) and the Americas (Chile), reflecting the international dimension of this symposium.

The colloquium provided an opportunity for convivial exchanges, both in the lectures and in the workshops and poster session, and reinforced the Catalysis and Spectrochemistry laboratory’s representativeness in the field of characterization of adsorbent materials and catalysts by vibrational and NMR spectroscopy.