Scientific program

Acoustics is mainly an interdisciplinary field, at crossroads between several scientific disciplines : solid and fluid mechanics, material sciences, signal and image processing, physiology and psychology, cognitive sciences....

CeLyA is unique in France as it brings together specialists from all these fields. Collaborations between them are very fruitful from a scientific point of view, but also for the practical applications of acoustics.

The scientific program developed in CeLyA promotes this interdisciplinary approach. It is organised in three main topics : noise sources, wave propagation and effects of sound on humans and animals. For each of these topics, the project is focused on activities for which the skills of Celya teams are particularly relevant.

The knowledge of sources is one of our main fields of study. Several aspects are addressed : physical modelling, numerical computation and experimental characterization (through inverse methods). These sources can have a solid nature (e.g. friction noise) or a fluid one (aeroacoustic source). Finally, the control of these sources is also studied.

Studies are partly devoted to the modelisation of propagation in the middle and high frequency range. This issue is important for industrial companies, because the accuracy of existing methods is still too low to allow them to use prediction tools. CeLyA also focuses on propagation in heterogeneous media, which can be biological tissues or the atmosphere (long-distance propagation of sound).

Research deals with hearing impairment, annoyance or effects of sound on health. Other fields are related to therapeutic effects of ultrasounds, improvement of medical imagery techniques and product sound quality applications.

In all studies, the uncertain (or random) nature of sources or propagation media is considered.

 As stated by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe in his speech on research on 1 February 2019, this support represents an additional commitment by the State in favour of research of 444 million euros over 5 years.

Since 2011 and 2012, within the framework of the investment programme for the future (P.I.A.), the State has been supporting LabExes which bring together research teams with international visibility, having chosen to join forces to develop ambitious scientific projects, play on an equal footing with their foreign counterparts, build an integrated research, training and valorisation policy, and also welcome students and high-level researchers.

These LabExes concern all fields of knowledge, and many of them bring together researchers from different specialities who come together to work on multidisciplinary projects and to develop new research themes.

Following an initial so-called "mid-term" evaluation, carried out in 2015 on the quality of the work carried out by these LabExes, the State decided in 2017 to carry out an in-depth evaluation of the laboratories of excellence and to extend for 5 years those that would receive a positive evaluation by an international jury.

In September 2018, 114 LabEx submitted a dossier to the French National Research Agency (A.N.R.). The 42 LabExes attached to one of the 4 long-term IdExes and 15 other LabExes, notably those linked to a university research school selected in 2017, were not concerned.

An international jury, chaired by Sir Malcolm Grant, former Vice-President of the University of Cambridge, former President of University College London and of the British National Health Service, was charged with evaluating these applications and proposing the list of LabExes that it considered should be extended.

After examining the 114 applications, the jury recommended that the State renew its support for 103 LabExes. The scientific and technological results obtained by these LabExes, as well as the impact of their activities on scientific communities, show the relevance and interest of the exceptional support provided by the State to these 103 LabExes.

In view of their evaluation by the jury, the State has decided not to extend 11 LabExes.
Dowload the list of the 103 LabEx renewed

The University of Lyon welcomes the renewal of 11 of its Laboratoires d'Excellence

Press kit University of Lyon