Research
From the standpoint of large international campuses, a scientific community gathered on a single site can claim to achieve "critical mass" when it exceeds several thousand researchers. This is true of the Saclay Plateau Campus, which at the end of the decade will house nearly 20,000 researchers and lecturer-researchers. Several areas of research at the site are internationally visible. For example, in mathematics, physics, space science, engineering, and geosciences between 2% and 4% of international publications have a co-author from a partner institute of the site, with an above average share of citations.
Saclay is also home to great names, among them two Nobel Prize winners for Physics –Albert Fert in 2007 (CNRS researcher and professor at Paris-Sud 11 University) and Pierre-Gilles de Gennes in 1991 (professor at Paris-Sud 11 University). There are also Fields Medallists, including Ngo Bao Chau in 2010 (Professor at Paris-Sud 11 University), Wendelin Werner in 2006 (professor at Paris-Sud 11 University and ENS), Laurent Lafforgue in 2002 (researcher at Paris-Sud 11 University and the IHES [Advanced Research Institute in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics]), Jean-Christophe Yoccoz in 1994 (professor at Paris-Sud 11 University), Pierre-Louis Lions, also in 1994 (professor at the Ecole Polytechnique), and Maxime Kontsevich in 1998 (professor at IHES).
A confirmation of the success of the Campus will be the number of researchers holding a grant from the European Research Council (ERC) who are selected to conduct their research at the Saclay Plateau. Already the research units at the Saclay site accommodate a large number of ERC grant holders obtained between 2007 and 2010 (approximately 15% of grants allocated nationally from these applications).
