First Joint Start of the School Year at ENSTA’s Two Campuses

Institute, Training, Student Life

Marking the completion of the merger that officially began on January 1, 2025, ENSTA’s 2026 academic year was the first to take place simultaneously and via a dual-campus format between the Paris-Saclay and Brest campuses. August 31 was a doubly historic day, as it also marked the welcome of students from the very first graduating classes of the new ENSTA/ISAE-SUPAERO general engineering and “Defense and Security” specialized engineering programs.

Estelle Iacona, ENSTA’s Director General, and Raymond Levet, Deputy Director General, welcomed the new students on behalf of the School’s entire staff and the entire ENSTA community.

Estelle Iacona emphasized:

“Becoming an engineer also means taking on civic responsibility: defending the role of science, fighting against obscurantism, fostering rational debate, promoting ethics and critical thinking, and knowing how to provide concrete solutions when crises arise.”

Estelle Iacona, Director General of ENSTA
Raymond Levet, Deputy Director General of ENSTA

Raymond Levet, for his part, reiterated that ENSTA’s mission is:

“To train outstanding civil and military engineers capable of meeting the needs of our country’s strategic sectors—defense and security, transportation, energy, maritime, digital technology, and healthcare—while developing their agility, resilience, and ability to give meaning to their work.”

Following a brief introduction of the leadership teams and the alumni association, faculty members Lionel Lapierre and Alexandre Chapoutot took the floor to discuss the highly relevant challenges facing research in marine and terrestrial robotics.

This same theme of robotics was then explored from the perspective of career opportunities during a roundtable discussion with ENSTA alumni who now hold positions in both startups and large corporations. The roundtable was moderated by Elena Murè, Director of Corporate Relations at ENSTA, with the participation of:

  • Laure Lebreton, Algorithm Engineer, Exail, Class of 2017
  • Florian Audigier, Co-founder of Egide, Class of 2015
  • Christophe Cazes, CTO of Robotics at John Cockerill Defense, Class of 1994
  • Amaury Picco, Robotics Engineer at Framatome Intercontrole, Class of 2025
  • Bruni Indrigo Dos Santos, Software Engineer at Moon Surgical, Class of 2014

The traditional back-to-school photo session wrapped up the morning.

New students in the ENSTA general engineering program, Paris-Saclay campus
New students in the general engineering program, the Defense and Security engineering program, and the work-study engineering program, Brest campus

The back-to-school activities will continue over the next few days, featuring, in particular, awareness campaigns on the risks of addiction and gender-based and sexual violence, as well as opportunities to explore the campuses and meet student clubs and associations.

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