Centrale Nantes

Centrale Nantes, also known as École Centrale de Nantes, is a Grande École of engineering, established in 1919 under the name Institut Polytechnique de l’Ouest.

The campus is situated in the centre of Nantes, a historic city on the banks of the Loire in the ancient province of Brittany, two hours by train from Paris.

There are over 2,000 students, with around 30 per cent international students. Both French and international students joining the first year of the engineering programme are automatically offered a place in the Max Schmitt Residence on campus.

As a member of the Ecoles Centrale Group, its partner institutions are CentraleSupélec, Centrale Lille, Centrale Lyon, Centrale Marseille and Centrale Beijing. It is also a member of the TIME (Top Industrial Managers for Europe) network, which enables student exchanges among the leading engineering institutions in Europe.

In 2014, the Alliance Centrale-Audencia-ensa Nantes was formed, building an alliance between Centrale Nantes, Audencia Business School and l’École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Nantes. This brings together engineering, business studies, architecture and design. The Centrale Audencia-ensa Nantes Business incubator has more than 20 years experience supporting startup projects.

Research at Centrale Nantes is carried out in six laboratories and centred around 11 main areas, including ocean engineering, computer science and automation, robotics and energy. Research platforms include ocean test facilities.

Three Central Nantes masters programmes have earned the Erasmus Mundus label: the European Master in Advanced Robotics (EMARO), the Master of Science in Computational Mechanics and EM SHIP Advanced Design.