Nova Manosalva Omar presented his work entitled “Contribution to numerical procedures in time-domain for simulation of Saw RFID tags,” which focuses on the numerical modeling of passive RFID systems based on querying patterns printed on the piezoelectric substrate by an electromagnetic wave.
Through a transducer printed on the substrate, the electromagnetic wave is transformed into sound waves where the surface wave (SAW) is used to read the patterns (barcode) containing information. Waves thus modified then return to the transducer to be retransmitted in the form of electromagnetic waves to the antenna for decoding. The problem lies in the design and optimization of such systems, for which only simplified models exist.
Omar Nova Manosalva’s work include implementing a multi-physics simulator, combining the laws of electromagnetism and those of elastodynamics. This technique allows the study of arbitrary geometries. The difficulty lies in the complexity of the substrate (anisotropy) and the relatively large size (in terms of wavelength) of the computational domain. A first two-dimensional simulator based on the finite-differences  in the time domain has been developed and will be extended to the general tri-dimensional case.
The work of Omar Nova Manosalva was carried out in the framework of a thesis co-directed by Michel Ney, Professor, Microwave sDepartment and Nestor Peña, a professor at the Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES). This thesis was jointly funded by Telecom Bretagne and UNIANDES for the first two years and by the Eiffel program for the last year, 2013.

Engineering students from Télécom Bretagne selected for the final phase of the Orange-Alcatel Innovation Challenge February 15 in Paris

The Innovation Challenge, which is part of the Arc Bretagne Atlantique Open Innovation program, offers students the opportunity to lead a project with a digital theme and have direct interaction with experts at Orange and Alcatel-Lucent. The goal of the challenge in 2013, led by Dominique Guillois, Orange, was to highlight the new possibilities offered by 4G.
Nicolas Demassieux Director of Orange Labs Recherche, and Mathieu Bourguignon, Director of the Orange account at Alcatel-Lucent, hosted the 8 groups of students from Télécom Bretagne, Enssat, Nantes Ecole de  Design and Audencia  on the premises of Orange Labs “Jardin de l’innovation” in Issy-les-Moulineaux.

Télécom Bretagne presented two projects:
1) Girti: a display system of information from your smart phone to the lenses of your glasses;
2) Security Chip: a system for alerting parents and locating a child in danger.
After their presentations the students had the opportunity to visit the Orange showroom where demonstrations of innovative services/products had been prepared for them.

Contact : Cécile Bothorel – cécile.bothorel@telecom-bretagne.eu – 02 29 00 12 40.

Telecom Bretagne once again distinguished itself at the IEEE Oceans’12 International Conference. For student activities, selection was tough. Only 17 students (all nationalities) were selected to present their poster during the competition. Augustin Alexandru Saucan, PhD student in the school’s  Image and information processing department received the second prize with the paper entitled: “Enhanced sonar bathymetry tracking in multi-path environment” written in collaboration with researchers at Telecom Bretagne: Christophe Sintes, Thierry Chonavel and Jean-Marc Le Caillec.
In addition, Yoann Ladroit, also a PhD student from the same department, was ranked among the top 10 with an article associated with the poster “Maximum Likelihood Estimator based on Quality Factor for Bathymetric Multibeam Echosounder ” written with Xavier Lurton, Christophe Sintes and René Garello.
Furthermore, two faculty members of the School were distinguished for holding positions of responsibility within the OES (Oceanic Engineering Society): Christophe Sintès as being responsible for OES student activities, co-head of the student poster contest and Gold representative (Graduate of The Last Decade) and René Garello elected president of IEEE OES. The strong presence of our representatives will facilitate the actions of the French Chapter of IEEE OES, cled by Telecom Bretagne (ten members).
International Oceans Conference
Oceans Conference is now identified as the reference in the fields of marine engineering, measurement, interpretation and knowledge of the sea with 9 focus areas ranging from topics related to underwater acoustics (sonar, AUVs, communications) or monitoring of the marine environment (radars, satellites, etc.), through maritime safety or methodological areas (signal processing and image). It is organized twice a year: every fall in North America and Europe and alternatively in Europe and  the Asia-Pacific in the spring.

Pierrick Brunet, a 3rd year engineering student, had the opportunity to attend the Compas 2013 conference from January 15 to 18 in Grenoble.

Through a course which facilitates access to the world of research, Pierrick Brunet, engineering student, had the opportunity to work with Serge Guelton, Research Associate at the Computer Science Department of the Open-source Pythran project, python compiler to C + +. Their collaboration has resulted in the presentation of a paper at the Compas 2013 conference (in the parallelism section) on “Automatic generation of native parallel modules for Python with OpenMP annotations.” The paper showed how Python can be used for prototyping and parallelization of HPC applications with performance close to C.

Research and engineering course at Telecom Bretagne

Since this year, engineering students at Telecom Bretagne can choose a course that facilitates access to the world of research. In the first year, students enrolled in this course carry out a development project supervised by a researcher and a PhD student. During the first semester of second year, students are taught awareness of research issues. For Michel Briand, deputy pedagogic director “research oriented courses such as stays in foreign universities and laboratories will be available soon for final year students’.

From left to right: Paul Brunet and Pierrick Blottière (3rd year engineering students at Telecom Bretagne) accompanied by Serge Guelton (associate researcher in the Computer Science Department).

The competition, organized by Intel in the fall is open to students in Europe and Russia. The two teams face a challenge of parallel programming. They are given an existing program with poor performance but sufficient to test the accuracy of the data, a set of input files, and a description of the problem. They must then optimize the program sequentially and then in parallel to make it scalable (so it can handle a large amount of data) and fast. For the best contestants, this means processing several hundred megabytes on a multi-core machine with 40 cores in less than a second. Finally, to test the code in a real environment, applications are launched on a cluster. The next phase of the competition will take place in the spring. Here’s betting that our students will be present!
Contact : Pierrick Brunet, engineering student – pierrick.brunet@telecom-bretagne.eu.

The winners for the best thesis presentation Omid Zia-Chahabi David and Juan Gomez-Cruz center and their supervisors Cécile Bothorel and Michel Morvan.

This event was attended by nearly 150 participants and had a particularly rich program: 6 lectures given by Institute faculty members, 8 presentations of doctoral theses and 35 poster presentations by doctoral and post-doctoral students. A booklet presenting the 136 projects already supported by the Journée Futur et Ruptures program was presented to the participants. The topics discussed during the day covered a wide range of research activities in the  Telecom schools of the Institute, highlighting results and scientific and societal challenges in areas as diverse as 3D vision, optical networks, video coding, sensor networks, biometrics, digital communications, social networking, informational competition, and even a philosophical questioning on how to achieve well-being together in the digital age.

Prize for the best thesis presentation

A panel representing the partners of the Fondation Telecom, selected the top three from among the eight theses presented. The final rankings will be announced at the annual ceremony of the Prix de la Fondation Télécom, which will be held March 21 at Google.
Shortlist:
- Omid Chahabi Zia, Telecom Bretagne, supervised by Christophe Laot, Raphaël Le Bidan and Michel Morvan, for his work entitled “Techniques of digital signal processing for optical transmission systems superfast broadband coherent detection”;
- Juan David Gomez Cruz, Telecom Bretagne, supervised by François Poulet and Cécile Bothorel for his work entitled “Socio-semantic network algorithms for a point of view based visualization of online communities”.
- Bert Buchholz, Telecom ParisTech, supervised by Tamy Boubekeur for his work entitled “Abstraction and processing animated 3D mass data.”
Best Poster Award
The meeting ended with the prize for the best poster, awarded to Hoang Giang Nguyen, post-doctoral student at Telecom Bretagne 2012 for his work on the application of radio on fiber on a tramway infrastructure in a digital city.

Michal Szczerbak, PhD student, Networks, security and multimedia department, Telecom Bretagne.

At the ICCS 2013 conference (Conceptual Structures for Knowledge Representation for STEM Research and Education), which was held in Mumbai (India) from 10 to 12 January, Michal Szczerbak was distinguished for the quality of his publication. The first prize for the PhD Award Winning Paper was awarded for his publication entitled “A model to compare and manipulate situations represented as semantically labeled graphs”, co-written with Ahmed Bouabdallah, Francois Toutain and Jean-Marie Bonnin (supervisor).
Michal Szczerbak’s co-supervisors are François Toutain,Orange Labs Lannion, and Bouabdallah Ahmed, associate professor at Telecom Bretagne.
As part of his thesis, Michal developed the KRAMER system (Kind of Reasoning That Abstracts Metasituations for Empowering Recommendations) that allows a user to be alerted by notifications that are triggered depending on the current status of the user as well as that of his family. The advantage of such a service is that it has a social media dimension because it allows any person to receive – via an original recommendation system – all notifications submitted by all other users of the service. The developed approach incidentally introduced a new form of communication that allows a user to share his situation with his family.

Contact : Michel Szczerbak, departement RSM – michal.szczerbak@telecom-bretagne.eu.

Michel Briand, Deputy Dean of academic affairs at Telecom Bretagne was appointed to the CNN, Friday, January 18, 2013 at Bercy (Paris).

Michel Briand Deputy Dean of academic affairs at Telecom Bretagne appointed to the CNN.
During this three-year mission, Michel Briand will bring his expertise on best free practices on the Internet, e-inclusion and networking of territories as well as his engineering skills in digital practice and technologies to the national level.
Responsible for pedagogical innovation and ICT (Information technology and communication for teaching) at Telecom Bretagne, Michel Briand has initiated a genuine policy of collaborative practices within the school.
His commitment to open training helped the establishment of a platform for online courses (available under Creative Commons license), a first for an engineering school in France. He also supports the development of Fablabs and  MOOCs within the Institut Mines-Telecom.
Michel Briand is at the origin of the “Forum des usages coopératifs” (forum for cooperative practices) the main meeting place for collaborative practices and digital social innovation. He is currently overseeing the opening of the Cantine numérique brestoise”.
As an elected member of Brest city council, in charge of Internet and multimedia expression, he set up the 105 public Internet access points in the city. Passionate about public policy concerning eInclusion, Michel Briand is developing a network of participatory magazines and collaborative books: “wiki-brest.” Co-founder of “Creatif”, an association of networks of public access to Internet and digital mediation, he participates in the animation of networks using a creative, collaborative and socially aware Internet. At the crossroads of popular education, digital culture, entrepreneurship, third places and short circuits, he is working on the networking of open social innovations and collaborative practice training, according to methodologies from free software networks of co-production and digital common goods

Contact : Priscillia Créach – priscillia.creach@telecom-bretagne.eu
* The CNN is in charge of counseling the French public authorities on the stakes of the digital economy. It was set up on 15 December 2012. Its aim is to independently formulate and publicly announce opinions and recommendations on any matter relating to the impact of digital technology on society and the economy.

Participants enjoying an evening at the Port du Château.

The aim of CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate), initiated at MIT in 2000, is to define and implement a pragmatic approach to engineering in undergraduate engineering programs. An essential element of this approach is the continuous improvement of the quality of these programs. CDIO unites more than a hundred institutions of international repute.

A pioneer in the field of pedagogy and active learning at a national level, Telecom Bretagne has been a member of the CDIO initiative since 2008. The School is actively involved in the promotion of CDIO in France.

More than 100 participants from 19 countries attended the meeting in Brest. They had the opportunity to exchange views and experience on the implementation of the 12 CDIO standards. Plenary sessions alternated with workshops where Telecom Bretagne students took part in simulation exercises.

Leaders of the CDIO network worked on defining the future organization of the network to better cope with its growth. They also looked ahead to the 2013 Conference where some 500 participants are expected. It will be held on the campuses of Harvard and MIT and is organized by Doris Brodeur MIT

This meeting had the support of Brest Métropole Océane and the General Council of Finistère.

Telecom Bretagne – a most creditable 8th place in the Grandes Ecoles 2012, organized by Challenges.

Table showing the top 30 schools

The methodology used was based on eight criteria. In particular, attention was focused on the employment rate upon graduation, international openness, friendly environment (the latter index also included the student-teacher ratio) and first salary expectations. The four other criteria, which were given less weighting, were: the cost of education programmes, “dream job opportunities”, scalability of the curriculum and selectivity.