Maxime Jacquot - Professor, vice-president of Education and Learning Transformation & director of the Optics department at University Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France and Laura Lallement  - Project Manager at the French National Research Agency (ANR) and a member of the Réseau Figure® team

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About a hundred honors programs named CMIs (Master's degree programs in engineering) have been set up since 2012 in about thirty French universities within Figure network, that has set up an accreditation process integrating the EURACE® criteria and main references and guidelines for quality assurance in the European Higher Education Area. This process is based on an independent accreditation committee comprising academics, representatives of the economic sector, students and former students. After 7 years of operation and continuous improvement, this honors program accreditation process has proven its viability and effectiveness. For French universities, it is an original experience in a country still marked by a low level of academic autonomy compared to the European High Education average.

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Maxime Jacquot received the PhD degree in engineering sciences from the University of Franche-Comté (UFC), France, in 2001. His PhD research was done in the Laboratoire d’Optique PM Duffieux (LOPMD) of Besançon and concerned digital microholography and its applications. In 2002, he joined as associate professor University of Jean Monnet at Saint Etienne, France. His research interests dealt with spectral interferometry and advanced imaging techniques. In 2006, he joined as associate professor the Optics Department of FEMTO-ST Institute at Besançon, France. He received a Habilitation degree (HDR) in 2011 at UFC. He became full professor at UFC/UBFC in 2018.  His research interests currently include optical physics, photonics and digital holography. He is director of the Optics research department of FEMTO-ST Institute at University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (UBFC) since 2019, and he is head of International Master PICS - ISITE BFC & Graduate School EIPHI since 2018. He was head of “Master of Excellence for Engineering” programs from 2013 to 2015 at UFC and in charge of 9 CMI programs at UFC from 2013 to 2020. CMI is a French national label delivered by CMI-FIGURE network for a Master of Excellence for Engineering and Research, with an education program designed over 5 years, in close connection with high quality research. CMI-FIGURE is a network of 30 French Universities. From 2019 to 2020, he was Vice-President of the Accreditation Committee in charge of the evaluation for the CMI-FIGURE network. Since 2021, he is Vice-President of Education and Learning Transformation at UBFC, France.