Environment

Highly Developed Scientific and Technological Know-How

Brittany is supported by an excellent research and higher education sector. The region is France’s second biggest provider of telecommunications engineering education and the country’s third biggest provider of schooling in electronics, IT and communications. Its engineering schools and universities, Rennes 1, Bretagne Sud and Bretagne occidentale, all three of which are equipped with laboratories and research schools, are authorized to provide highly specialized post-graduate education.

Brittany is also able to pride itself on an excellent level of research, be it in the public or private sector. A beneficiary of the support of two institutions, CNRS (National Scientific Research Centre) and INRIA (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control), it has successfully developed numerous industrial applications across all sectors: telecommunications, multimedia, corporate services, transportation and automobile industry, genome research service, and emerging technologies associated with the Health and Environment sector. From JPEG to MP3, a whole range of innovations originate from Breton laboratories. The region recorded the highest proportion of R&D projects in France during the period between 2001 and 2005.