The French law related to Universities’ liberties and responsibilities in August 2007 (LRU) has deeply removed the academic landscape and its governing rules, introducing new balances and decision-making processes who directly impact the organization of public bodies and the everyday life of researchers and lecturers.

Since 2010 the so-called “future investments” (investissements d’avenir) promotes the emergence of new entities (Labex, IRT, IHU, IEED…), of projects of site logistics (IDEX, SATT), of infrastructures funding possibilities (Equipex, Infrastructures), of training actions (IDEFI) and of targeted research (Cohorte, Nanoélectronique, Bioinformatique…). Those new funding opportunities on a longer period of time (5 to 10 years) introduce local rearrangements that public bodies must appropriate themselves, formalize and integrate.
In a compelled economical context French state’s positions and strategic orientations in terms of research and innovation appears as major stakes for the economical reflation of the country. With its recent decisions and the 2013 budget notice, the French state confirms the national choice to support and promote a higher education system of high quality and a strong research turned towards future.
With a 2,2% increase in 2013, the budget of the French ministry of Education and Research reached 23 billion Euros, which defines research and innovation as a major priority  and which confirms that the government considers student success and public research as key elements of growth. Research and innovation clearly appear as major levers for the economical reflation and for the way out of the crisis in our country. Those choices and their dedicated funds in particular will enable our research teams to challenge their European and international colleagues.

The current research context is therefore moving and new; its actors must be accompanied at two levels:
-    the funding channeling in order to understand all those political and strategic changes as well as the rules and expectations of the new research funding opportunities in order to select those that are best adapted;
-    the project shaping by sharing the needs and objectives of all parties involved (taking into account their specificities and interests for the project) and by constituting a coherent and full partnership.

Nowadays the research work mainly proceeds from a logic of projects whose budget is built with public grants and private funding, in an always more competitive context (in terms of number of submitted proposals and international opening) and definitely oriented towards transfer. This is why innovation actors (coming from the public research as well as from the socio-economic landscape) are well advised to look for the support of project engineering professionals in order to increase their funding potential.