The first Franco-Indian summit on scientific and academic cooperation between the French Écoles normales supérieures (ENS) and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) took place on March 11, 2018. On the occasion of this Knowledge Summit, an agreement was officially signed in the presence of Frédérique Vidal, French Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and Prakash Javadekar, Indian Minister for Resource Development.

This new agreement is charactarised by the creation of a collaboration network, between ENS and IISER, at the scientific level (research seminars, joint research, publications) and academic level (professor/researcher, student and doctoral exchange programmes; joint training; research internship; thesis, etc.).
As far as the ENS of Lyon is concerned, this alliance will increase the collaboration already undertaken with the IISER Pune by extending its cooperation network towards the other IISERs - which are institutions similar to the ENS - and to offer a wider range of new opportunities. One of the objectives to be achieved is the creation of a joint thesis program.

For the signing of the agreement, on March 11, 2018, the ENS group was represented by Jean-François Pinton, President ENS of Lyon and the IISER group by Shyam Rai, Dean of the faculty and Chairman of the Board of Directors at IISER Pune.