As part of the Franco-Indian Campus project ILIADE (Innovation through Plants and AI for India and France), coordinated by the University of Reunion Island, a scientific and institutional workshop was held in India from October 27 to 31, 2025, bringing together French and Indian partners around a common objective:

to develop, through a cross-cutting and innovative approach, via the prism of biotechnologies for medicinal plants, humanities and artificial intelligence applied to health, a common training and research offering to address the major public health challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, marked by the resurgence of infectious and metabolic diseases.

Bringing together the universities of La Réunion, Poitiers, Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Lumière Lyon 2, and the Indian partners VIT, NCBS, JIPMER and CSIR-CIMAP, the ILIADE project is structured around three strong ambitions:

• To offer a structured university curriculum in the field of biosciences and health, accessible to French, Indian and IORA-ASEAN region students;
• Create a multidisciplinary training and research ecosystem that promotes innovation and partnerships between universities, laboratories and industries in the health-biotechnology sector;
• Promote cross-mobility of students and teacher-researchers between partner institutions.

This workshop, held at various partner institutions – NCBS in Bangalore, VIT in Vellore, JIPMER Hospital, and the University of Pondicherry in Pondicherry – marks a major milestone for this project supported by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. The diplomas were awarded to the first graduating class of the Master's program in Biotechnology, the first degree developed within the Franco-Indian campus framework.

This twinning degree Master's program, structured around two years of hybrid and international study and taught in English, combines innovative teaching methods with research internships. It offers two tracks:

• Biotechnology specialized in Medicinal Plants and Phytotherapy
• Biotechnology specialized in Computer & Artificial Intelligence applied to Biomedical Data
  25 students from the Biotechnology Applied to Medicinal Plants and Phytotherapy course were rewarded at the ceremony organized at the VIT in Vellore on October 30, in the presence of representatives from the partner universities of the ILIADE consortium, the coordinator of the 4 Franco-Indian campuses and the French Embassy in India.

This workshop was also an opportunity to take stock of the project after 3 years, to exchange on the synergies between ILIADE and other neighbouring projects in which other Indian university establishments are involved such as the University of Pondicherry, included in the Erasmus+ KA 171 India project alongside the University of Reunion, Vellore Institute of Technology, the University of Poitiers, the Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University, the Lumière Lyon 2 University, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants as well as to explore new academic collaborations on the theme of biotechnologies applied to medicinal plants.

“The ILIADE project fully illustrates the University of Reunion’s internationalization strategy. By bringing together partners of excellence around health biotechnologies, it strengthens our position as a key player in academic and scientific cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region,” says Anne-Françoise Zattara, project coordinator at the University of Reunion.