Grenoble is one of France’s major research centres, with a close-knit ecosystem spanning Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP, CNRS, Inria, CEA, and the university hospital. Researchers work across mathematics, computing, engineering, health, and industry, giving students opportunities to encounter both fundamental research and applied projects.
M1 AM includes research projects and internships, allowing students to work with Grenoble laboratories and discover research careers first-hand. The combination of strong mathematical foundations, scientific computing, and local interdisciplinary teams makes Grenoble a particularly rich place to continue toward a PhD.
The laboratories below are the ones most directly connected to applied and pure mathematics. Each entry lists the laboratory’s website, its main topics, and a short description.
Website: www-ljk.imag.fr
Topics: PDEs and numerical analysis; scientific and symbolic computation; algebra, coding theory and cryptography; geometric modelling; image analysis, computer graphics and computer vision; probability, statistics, machine learning and optimisation; finance and signal processing; ocean, atmosphere and geoscience modelling; computational mechanics; non-differentiable and non-smooth optimisation.
Description: Jointly hosted by Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS and Inria, LJK is Grenoble’s flagship mathematics laboratory and the largest pure/applied mathematics research group in the region, with more than 250 members organised into 17 teams across three departments (AMAC — Algorithms, Models, Analysis and Computation; DATA — Data & Randomness: Theory & Applications; and GI — Geometry & Images). It offers one of the widest ranges of mathematical research topics in Grenoble and is a natural home for mathematics PhD projects.
Website: www.timc.fr
Topics: Mathematical modelling of biological and physiological systems; biostatistics and probability in the life sciences; medical imaging, image processing and machine learning; computational systems biology; mathematical and digital medicine; clinical data science.
Description: TIMC is an interdisciplinary research unit bringing together mathematicians, data scientists and clinicians around the use of applied mathematics and digital sciences for the understanding and control of normal and pathological processes in health. Its strength is a translationnal approach that connects fundamental life-sciences research, technology development and clinical medicine, and it hosts around 70 PhD students and post-doctoral researchers each year.
Website: g-scop.grenoble-inp.fr
Topics: Operations research and mathematical optimisation; production system design and scheduling; combinatorial, discrete and continuous optimisation; modelling and performance evaluation; decision support and knowledge engineering for industrial systems.
Description: G-SCOP is a research laboratory of Grenoble INP focused on the design and optimised management of production systems and on product design problems. Its work rests heavily on powerful mathematical and optimisation tools used to model, optimise and evaluate performance, making it a strong fit for students interested in optimisation, operations research and their industrial applications.
Website: www.gipsa-lab.grenoble-inp.fr
Topics: Signal processing and image processing; control and estimation; communication systems; mathematical modelling and optimisation of dynamical systems; statistical learning for signals and images; data-driven systems and cyber-physical systems.
Description: GIPSA-lab is a large interdisciplinary laboratory of Grenoble INP with a strong technological and mathematical expertise in signals, systems, control and communications. While broader than a pure mathematics laboratory, it contains substantial mathematical research in optimisation, estimation, learning and modelling, and offers many PhD positions with an applied, engineering flavour.
Website: liglabs.grenoble-inp.fr
Topics: Algorithm design and complexity; discrete and applied mathematics; integer and continuous optimisation; formal methods, verification and program analysis; numerical methods and scientific computing; graph algorithms; combinatorial optimisation; theoretical computer science.
Description: LIG (Laboratoire d’Informatique de Grenoble), hosted by Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP and CNRS, is a large computing laboratory with a strong mathematical core. In addition to its computer science activities, it carries out significant research in algorithms, discrete mathematics, optimisation and formal/numerical methods, making it a relevant destination for PhD projects that sit at the interface of mathematics and computer science.
