INSTITUT CATHOLIQUE D'ARTS ET METIERS

Their core work

ICAM is a French Catholic engineering school (grande école) with multiple campuses, delivering engineering education alongside applied industrial research. In H2020, they contributed hands-on manufacturing expertise: first in electromagnetic forming — a niche process for bonding copper to aluminium without heat — and later in building international networks for sustainable nanofabrication. Their academic base makes them useful for training, knowledge dissemination, and validation roles within industrial consortia. They bring the credibility of a higher-education institution with the practical engineering orientation of a grande école focused on industry-ready graduates.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their earliest H2020 work (2015-2018), ICAM was focused on a specific, tangible manufacturing process: using electromagnetic fields to join copper and aluminium, with clear industrial targets in electrical and thermal engineering. By 2020, their vocabulary shifted almost entirely away from specific processes toward network coordination — international cooperation, technology confidence building, validation and exploitation — suggesting a move from doing to enabling. The trajectory is from niche process specialist toward a broader role in manufacturing knowledge networks and sustainable technology dissemination.

ICAM appears to be transitioning from hands-on process research toward international network facilitation and sustainability-framed manufacturing, which makes them a more versatile but less technically deep partner for future consortia.

How they like to work

ICAM has participated exclusively as a consortium partner across both H2020 projects — never as coordinator — indicating they prefer contributing defined expertise rather than carrying project management responsibility. Despite only two projects, they engaged 28 unique partners across 11 countries, suggesting they join large, internationally structured consortia rather than tight bilateral collaborations. This pattern fits an engineering school that adds academic credibility, student/graduate access, and process validation capacity as one specialist voice among many industrial and research partners.

ICAM has connected with 28 unique consortium partners across 11 countries through just two projects, reflecting participation in large, geographically diverse consortia. No strong geographic concentration is evident from the available data, beyond a French base.

What sets them apart

ICAM occupies a distinctive position as a Catholic engineering grande école — combining academic legitimacy with a strong industry orientation that most research universities lack. Their specialisation in electromagnetic forming is genuinely niche: very few academic institutions in Europe have hands-on expertise in magnetic pulse welding, making them a rare find for consortia targeting advanced joining in electromobility or power electronics. For a consortium builder, they also offer access to a large network of engineering graduates and industry-facing academic staff across multiple French campuses.

Highlights from their portfolio

• JOIN-EM
  Highest-funded project (€205,306) and ICAM's most technically specific contribution — electromagnetic joining of copper to aluminium is directly relevant to EV motors, power cables, and heat exchangers, giving this project strong commercial application potential.
• NanoFabNet
  Spans both Manufacturing and Digital sectors under an Innovation Action scheme, showing ICAM's capacity to contribute to cross-disciplinary, internationally scoped network-building projects beyond pure process research.