Finding the right home for EMBL Grenoble:
How geography, history, policy, and scientific collaboration helped build a world-class scientific ecosystem.
In honour of EMBL Grenoble’s 50th anniversary, the archive is producing articles related to its history, which also feature materials transferred to the archive as part of our anniversary collection drive in 2024. Today, we’ll be taking a close look at Grenoble’s history and how its achievements have led to a reputation for scientific excellence.
Grenoble is known as a world-class hub for science and technology. It has the highest concentration of scientific and research jobs outside of the French capital, despite its population size not being among France’s top 10 cities.
The city has a tightly knit ecosystem of academic excellence, scientific innovation, and industrial output. The Grenoble-Alpes region is home to a quarter of France’s microelectronic jobs and is known as the French ‘Silicon Valley’. Grenoble Alpes University is ranked first in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology, and the city is home to several first-rate research institutes, with EMBL Grenoble situated on the famous ‘Polygone Scientifique’, alongside the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF).
This innovative spirit has a deep history tied to its very geography. Grenoble’s location at the foot of the French Alps gives it a mountainous terrain with steep slopes, ideal for fast-flowing rivers. Major waterways like the Isère and Drac are fed by glaciers and seasonal snowmelt, providing a consistent and powerful flow of water.
Consequently, it was here In 1869, that Aristide Bergès built one of the first hydroelectric power plants to fuel his paper factory, a growing industry at the time. The development of this energy source, which Bergès dubbed ‘houille blanche’ or ‘white coal’, fueled its industrial growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It attracted industries such as electrometallurgy and aluminium production and became the backbone of Grenoble’s status as a modern-day leader in renewable energy.
After World War II, the French prioritised scientific research and innovation to rebuild the country. Physicist Louis Néel, who had moved to the city following the war, felt that Grenoble should be the crucible of this national initiative, and wanted the city to rival Paris in its scientific output. He created the Grenoble Centre for Nuclear Studies (CENG) in 1955 and pushed an interdisciplinary approach that has become known as the ‘Grenoble Model’. This model fuels technological innovation based on close collaboration between public research institutions, higher education, and industry, showing how regional ecosystems can drive global scientific excellence and economic growth through integration and cooperation rather than competition. Over the next few decades, a spate of scientific institutions covering a wide variety of disciplines sprang up all over the city.
In 1967, France and Germany founded the ILL, beginning construction in 1969. In that same year, EMBO made its first proposal to establish ’outstations’ that emphasised technological development as part of its laboratory project. EMBL was subsequently founded in 1974, and in 1975, it reached an agreement to establish an outstation at the ILL site with Andrew Miller as its first director. Since then, EMBL and the ILL have collaborated on many projects involving neutron scattering techniques to study biological macromolecules, and they frequently work together on sample preparation and data analysis tools.
In 1994, the ESRF joined the campus, and in 1996, ESRF and EMBL formed the Joint Structural Biology Group to establish world-class facilities and services for scientists, such as the MASSIF beamlines. This is a partnership that has endured for more than three decades.
In 2002, EMBL co-founded the Partnership for Structural Biology with ESRF, ILL, and the Institute for Structural Biology, all located on the European Photon and Neutron (EPN) campus, as the site is now known. This collaboration aims to advance structural biology through resource sharing and by collaboratively creating advanced techniques and technical platforms.
The collaborations extend to other research institutions. EMBL works closely with the Université Grenoble Alpes to create opportunities for training, research, and joint appointments, as well as shared oversight of PHD students to instil this kind of scientific mindset and culture into the next generation of scientists.
It’s this combination of geography, history, policy, and scientific collaboration that has led to Grenoble’s rise as a major scientific hub. EMBL Grenoble exemplifies the interdisciplinary spirit of the Grenoble scientific ecosystem, bridging biology, physics, and computing in a way that continues to shape the future of molecular science.
