Rail & Recherche Prize for the best student internship

SNCF set up this prize in 2002 to honour the most outstanding interns in the field of research and advanced technology, and by extension, the universities and engineering schools they have attended. The prize is awarded each year.

There have always been a lot of student internships at SNCF, and over the years they have proven to be a valuable way to maintain contacts with institutions of higher learning. Such contacts are absolutely essential today in the fields of science and technology, where young people's interest in pursuing training and a career seems to be declining.

Although SNCF's business is to provide services, the company's involvement with technology is strong. It needs capable young people with scientific backgrounds to ensure its own future and the future of rail transport. Giving them the opportunity to do interesting and educationally rewarding internships is a sure way to help achieve these objectives.


A prize for the most outstanding projects

The 2007 annual prize for the best research work by a student intern at SNCF – the fifth issue of the "Rail & Recherche" prize, first instituted in 2002 – was awarded to six students on April 26, 2007 by SNCF senior managers at SNCF headquarters in Paris .

Out of a total of 100 students submitting internship reports for work performed during 2006, 30 were shortlisted for the contest, 15 were ultimately nominated and six of those received awards.

The awards were presented by SNCF Chairman Anne-Marie Idrac, SNCF Property, Research, Engineering Managing Director Jacques Couvert and SNCF Innovation & Research Director Philippe Renard, SNCF Management Director Anne Mercier-Gallay and Alix Gicquel, Scientific Director of INRETS.

The panel comprised, besides the railway's Innovation and Research executives, representatives of various French scientific research institutes that partner with SNCF, including the roads and highways "laboratory", Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées (LCPC), the transport safety and research institute, Institut National de Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité (INRETS) and the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). The panel selected the reports and finally the ultimate prize-winners on the basis of the creativeness and originality of the internship, of its scientific excellence, its difficulty and the added value provided to the company.

The contest is sponsored by the SNCF Research Department's magazine, Rail & Recherche , and was created with support from SNCF's Executive Management Department ("Direction des Cadres") and SNCF's Institute of Management .

The winners of the 2007 prizes were as follows:

/// First prize:

Guillaume BOUREZ (Institut Supérieur d'Informatique, de Modélisation et de leurs Applications (ISIMA) – Clermont-Ferrand), for his internship in the SNCF Innovation & Research Department on:
"Locomotive scheduling and integer multicommodity network flow models".

/// Second prizes:

This year 3 persons were awarded a second price for 3 internships in the SNCF stock ingeniering department about:
“Open Coupling"

Hafid FERAOUN (Université de Technologie de Belfort Monbéliard - UTBM)
Nicolas ZIEMIAK (Université de Technologie de Belfort Monbéliard - UTBM)
Guillaume RAMECOURT (Institut de Génie Informatique et Industriel - IG2I - Lens)

/// Third prize:

Loretta LEONI (Università Politecnica delle Marche – Ancône - Italie), for his internship in the SNCF Innovation & Research Department on:
"Experimental characterization of the squealing to breaking on TGV (HST): feasibility and applicability".

/// Jury special prize:

Guillaume LECLERC (École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne – ENSTB – Brest), for his internship in teh EIV Les Laumes :
"Study, design and realization of an automatic test bench to validate RST-GSM-R mobiles, in agreement with the ISO 9001 version 2000 stanbard"

(* interships in 2006)

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