The University of Sfax is a university based in Sfax. It was founded in 1986. It is organized into 21 higher education institutions; among them, a Faculty of Medicine linked to two multidisciplinary university hospitals and a Faculty of Sciences with a focus on life science (human, animal and vegetal) and a the center of Biotechnology.
The university is very open to its socio-economic environment. It largely contributes to diversifying the economic fabric of the governorate of Sfax and to strengthening the economic weight of the region at the national level.The USF has an infrastructure developed in the various teaching and research institutions. Thus, the Faculty of Medecine and the University Hospital Center host about thirty research units and a dozen research laboratories in different medical field including human molecular genetics, microbiology, parasitology and mycology. These laboratories have different research equipment enabling high level research work.

The mission of the INRAE is to produce scientific knowledge, contribute to innovation and support public policies. Its activity is recognized worldwide in many fields, especially in biology and biotechnology. By hosting more than 150 doctoral students, he is also actively involved in training young people by and for research. Research on animal biology, microbiology and food science is at the heart of its work; they mobilize mathematicians and computer scientists to understand the complexity of biological mechanisms studied and predict the functioning of living systems at different scales and for different purposes. The teams of our center are mobilized to combine fundamental and applied knowledge, exploring the diversity and variability, from the molecule to the individual in his environment.

Among the research topics developed at INRA: “the microbial food and intestinal ecosystems and the functional interactions between food, microbiota and host”, many facilities are available as the PAPPSO plateform for metaproteomics and MetaGenoPoliS (MGPS: www.mgps.org). Furthermore, INRAE has high competences in new bioinformatics pipelines for microbiome data analysis and thus, will be involved in the training of ER and ESR to acquire the know-how in data processing.

The IHU MI is one of the six IHU created by the French government after the Future Investments program launched in 2009. It gathers research laboratories with the aim of condensing French fundamental and clinical researches to fight infectious diseases. The IHU MI project puts a strong emphasis on translational research, in order to convert discoveries into innovations and to bring new products on the market. The creation of a large centre with an international dimension in the field of infectious diseases was judged essential in French national health and research strategy. The IHU researchers, especially from the MEPHI unit, have a large experience in the field of innovative and routine laboratory diagnosis of infectious and tropical diseases.

They are running the largest clinical microbiology laboratory in France investigating about 2 million clinical specimens a year, covering all clinical microbiology fields (bacteriology, virology, mycology, parasitology and health-care environmental microbiology, biobanking) and techniques (culture, molecular diagnosis including real-time genome sequencing, serology and antigen detection).

The University of Florence (UNIFI) can trace its origins to the Studium Generale, which was established in 1321, and it is one of the largest organizations for research and higher education in Italy with over 50,000 students, 1,700 teaching and research staff, 1,600 technical and administrative staff and 1,600 PhD students and research fellows. Researchers at the University of Florence operate within 21 different departments and can benefit from approximately 40 research structures, including inter-departmental and inter-university centres, as well as specialized research, knowledge transfer and advanced training centres. The Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine (DECM) has been awarded as one of the 180 Departments of Excellence of Italian Universities.

The DECM as a professional aggregation of professors and researchers with different scientific disciplinary sectors that integrate the various disciplines in favour of the overall progress of the knowledge and the translation of the same in the best preventive, diagnostic, assistance, therapeutic and rehabilitative practices. The presence of scientific disciplinary sectors within the economic sciences also makes it possible to develop research objectives with a view to sustainability, in order to make the research results transferable to the maximum number of stakeholders. In the different laboratories, beyond the technologies, skills and knowledge of excellence are identified, which place the Department among the most advanced national and international companies in the various research fields.