On October 14, Catherine Davy was awarded the medal of Knight of the National Order of Merit at theArts et Métiers campus in Lille by Jean-Pierre Letartre, president of Entreprises et Cités and holder of the rank of Knight in the National Order of the Legion of Honor.
A look back at Catherine Davy's National Order of Merit medal ceremony
A commitment to education and the region
Since 1963, the National Order of Merit has recognized distinguished service in either the civil or military public sector, or in the private sector for a period of 10 years.
With nearly 30 years of experience in higher education and research, Catherine Davy has remained attuned to the needs of businesses, societal changes, digital, energy and environmental transitions, and younger generations. After becoming the first woman to head an Arts et Métiers campus, she took over as director of the Lille campus on July 15.
After an introductory speech by Laurent Champaney, Director GeneralArts et Métiers, Jean-Pierre Letartre, a Lille figure committed to businesses and regional development, reviewed Catherine Davy's career before presenting her with her award. Mr. Letartre is notably president of the Entreprises & Cités network, which operates throughout the Lille Metropolitan Area and beyond.
"For the past two years, as Director of the Arts et Métiers campus, first in Angers and now in Lille, you have been working with a desire to shake things up in this very male-dominated environment, with the aim of making engineering more human. In the past, engineers were trained to become experts. From the 2000s onwards, with the spread of the internet, engineers were trained to organize information. Today, with the advent of artificial intelligence and numerous technological developments, engineers are trained to become "citizens" capable of "building society," commented Jean-Pierre Letartre.
The event brought together the director's friends and family, staff members, alumni, and students from the Arts et Métiers campuses Arts et Métiers Lille and Angers, which she headed from 2022 to 2024.
I am deeply touched and moved to receive this award. It is recognition of a long journey, and I would like to thank all those who have been invaluable milestones, both in my professional life at Arts et Métiers and in my personal life.
His career
Catherine Davy is a general engineer who graduated from École Centrale de Nantes in 1996. She is also a graduate of École Normale Supérieure, an associate professor of mechanics (since 1997), and a doctor of École Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Cachan since 2001. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge (Great Britain), followed by a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Faculty of Dental Surgery in Nantes, she was a lecturer and then a professor at the École Centrale de Lille for 18 years. Catherine Davy holds a qualification to supervise research (HDR) from the University of Lille and has spent most of her career as a teacher-researcher in Engineering Sciences and Materials Mechanics. From 2022 to 2024, she headed the Arts et Métiers campus Arts et Métiers and the Laval Institute.
Catherine Davy intends to put her commitment to transition (energy, ecological, societal) to work for the Lille campus, where she has worked for 18 years as a university professor at the École Centrale. She will roll out the institution's structuring project across the region with the development, within the campus, of an Evolutive Learning Factory ELF), production lines representative of the industry of the future, fully digitized and backed up by digital twins. She is particularly committed to promoting the school's corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments.
