Integrated Master-PhD Track | Civil Engineering

• Students following the Integrated Master-PhD Track follow the same courses as for the Master's specialism - Materials and Structures in their Environment.
• During their Master's programme they will have the opportunity to explore potential PhD subjects by getting involved in research projects. 
• Subject to successful completion of the Master's degree, to final acceptance by the ad hoc committee and to the award of a PhD grant, students on this track would naturally progress towards funded PhD studies, in the Research Institute in Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Students are, of course, also free to pursue other avenues in academia or industry.

About the GeM Institute

The GeM Institute is a Joint Research Unit supervised by Nantes Université, Centrale Nantes and the CNRS. Founded in 2004, the objective was to bring together within the same laboratory all the skills in the Nantes Saint-Nazaire area in the fields of civil engineering, materials and processes, modelling and simulation in structural mechanics. The GeM is actively involved in research training with around one hundred PhD students and several master programmes. Learn more
 

Research Projects

Research Facilities

Sustainability and Green Building Platform

These facilities provides researchers and companies with exceptional experimental and digital resources.
In order to meet the challenges of environmental civil engineering, the platform brings together simulation tools adapted for design and management of the lifecycle of structures.

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Biaxial machine

The biaxial machine BIAX is a unique piece of apparatus, designed at Centrale Nantes, to simulate at laboratory scale, the propagation of fluid flow through a partially saturated medium, under hydro-mechanical loadings. Experimental campaigns using this apparatus are envisaged to characterize the behavior of soils with respect to pollutant infiltration, but also underground energy storage

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Examples of PhD theses underway or recently defended

• Durability of the floating part of an offshore wind turbine: From laboratory to real site
• Modeling of littoral erosion in the face of climate changes
• Durability of concretes based on new low-carbon binders: Performance and environmental impact, Rheo-mechanical behavior of cementitious materials suitable for placement by 3D printing
• Study of hydro-mechanical instabilities in geomaterials
• Controlling earthQuakes in the laboratory using pertinent fault stimulating techniques

Numerous international awards for our PhD students:

• Imane Bekrine receives the Best Student Presentation Award at the ACI/RILEM ICCM2024 international conference
• Two GeM PhD students at Centrale Nantes awarded research prizes at RUGC (Civil Engineering University Conference) 2024
• Marinelle El Khoury receives the Centrale Innovation 2023 PhD Prize
• Siddhartha H. Ommi - award-winning finalist for the Ioannis Vardoulakis PhD prize at the ALERT Geomaterials 2023 Workshop
• Rana Al Nemer wins the Best Poster Award during the ALERT Geomaterials 2023 workshop
• Imane Elkhaldi wins the prize for best scientific contribution on concrete at the Congrès Français du Génie Civil
• Hannah Franz, PhD student at Centrale Nantes, awarded the René Houpert 1st Prize from the Association Universitaire de Génie Civil (AUGC)

Giulio Sciarra is Professor in Mechanics at Centrale Nantes. He heads up the GEOMEC (Environmental Geomechanics) research team in the GeM (Research Institute in Civil and Mechanical Engineering) at Centrale Nantes. He is interested in the mechanics of porous media and geomechanics, both in the framework of numerical modeling and advanced experimental activity, with a particular emphasis in hydro-mechanical instabilities.