Alcatel-Lucent and Supélec celebrate the one-year anniversary of the first "Flexible Radio" Teaching and Research Chair in France

Paris and Gif-sur-Yvette, May 2008 - Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Supélec today celebrated the one-year anniversary of the “Flexible Radio” Teaching and Research Chair for Mobile Telecommunications at Supélec, the prestigious French engineering school.

The flexible radio concept will play a vital role in mobile communications of tomorrow. It consists in using software to dynamically reconfigure radio systems to enable the numerous current and future communication standards (WiMAX, 3G and LTE for example) to coexist within a given item of equipment, as well as optimizing the use of radio resources and reducing specific equipment requirements and on-site intervention.

Alcatel-Lucent and Supélec have created this Teaching and Research Chair in order to develop new technological advances adapted to this heterogeneous environment.

This Chair serves to:

develop high-level radio frequency skills in France, adapted to the needs of the telecommunications of tomorrow;
anticipate progress in standardization;
encourage the development of new researchers in the mobile radio sector on the Saclay plateau ;
support technical excellence and innovation in France in an area that is now underpinning investments of mobile operators for the next decade.
The Flexible Radio Chair incumbent, Mérouane Debbah*, joined Supélec on June 15, 2007. Assisted by a team of post-graduate PhD students and trainees, he works in close collaboration with the Supélec teams concerned, mainly on the campuses of Gif-sur-Yvette in the Paris region, and in Rennes. This chair will moreover be involved in the new RTRA DIGITEO (Advanced Research Thematic Network for research into information science and technology) of the Saclay plateau.

“In the area of radio technologies, Germany and Belgium are the only countries to have a comparable alliance between a university center and industry. Alcatel-Lucent’s three and a half year commitment will ensure the lasting development of Flexible Radio telecommunications skills in France,” declared Serge Tchuruk, Chairman of the Board of Alcatel-Lucent.

Alain Bravo,Executive Director of Supélec, is thrilled with this new step in the long-lasting cooperation with Alcatel-Lucent: “It is a tradition at Supélec to establish solid partnerships with industrial partners. Today more than ever, research work has to be closely related to industrial concerns in order to ensure a high standard of tertiary education. On top of that, with Alcatel-Lucent, this cooperation takes an outstanding international dimension.”



*Mérouane Debbah - Biography
Master of Science and PhD graduate in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, Mérouane Debbah is an internationally reputed researcher in the area of mobile telecommunications. He has written more than a hundred papers published in international journals/conferences and registered three patents. Before joining Supélec, Mérouane Debbah conducted his research activities at the Eurecom Institute, where he worked on numerous European projects.