Rennes, the capital of Brittany, is the 10th biggest city of France. This town has a human size with 400 000 inhabitants and is known for its peaceful way of life. Rennes is a major touristic place in Brittany, thanks to its strong history and culture. Rennes is located near famous landmarks like Saint Malo, the privateer city, Mont Saint-Michel and its bay (UNESCO World Heritage), the Green Emerald coast, and the Loire Valley.
Rennes is the biggest academic city in western France with more than 60 000 students from universities of Rennes 1 and Rennes 2, and 28 engineering schools (ENS Rennes, ENSAI, INSA, CentraleSupélec, Telecom Bretagne, …). Rennes is also well known for its scientific and technological research community gathering 4 000 researchers in public and industrial centers whose areas cover electronic, digital imaging, digital communication, chemistry, health and environment.
This is especially true for Information Technologies with big companies like Orange, Technicolor, Canon, ST-Microelectronics, Mitsubishi Electric, Google Flexycore, and numerous SME and startups. The French government recently created 9 national research platforms, among them, the pole “Images et réseaux” in Rennes to foster collaborations and networking between academics and industries in digital imaging and communications.
Last but not least, Brittany becomes a national leader in cyber security. The “pôle d’excellence cyber” exemplifies this leadership in cyber security, which has become a national priority. The cyber cluster’s vocation is to draw together the skills from education, research and technology, but also economic development. On top of Brittany’s prominent military sites (Government Defense procurement Agency (DGA) and French Navy), this cluster has identified around 75 entities working in cyber security in the region today. This ranges from big companies (Thales, Orange Labs, Cap Gemini, Nokia, Sopra Group…) to SMEs delivering technological solutions covering the whole cyber security value chain; 13 academic research labs working in cyber security including 7 in particular that work in cyberdefence (Inria Rennes, IRISA, Lab-STICC, IRMAR, IETR, etc.) for a total of 47 research teams. The cluster can draw on the availability of high-level courses (Université de Rennes 1, Telecom Bretagne, INSA Rennes, ENSIBS, ENSSAT, etc.)
With 5 vendors located in Rennes (NexGuard Kudelski, Kantar Media, IRT b-com, ContentArmor, Lamark), Rennes is also the capital of digital watermarking 🙂
