Founded in 1991, the University of Cergy-Pontoise (UCP) is a public teaching and research institute located in the small French town of Cergy-Pontoise.
The town is part of the Val-d'Oise neighbourhood near Paris, meaning UCP is one of 17 national universities with premises residing within 30 km of Paris city centre. It is about a 40-minute drive northwest of the capital, and 30km from Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle international airport.
The University of Cergy-Pontoise has six campuses called Les Chênes, Saint-Martin, Neuville-sur-Oise, Gennevilliers, Argenteuil and Sarcelles. It is a multidisciplinary university with more than 20 national research laboratories and two national excellence laboratories at the institution.
It caters for students at all levels of graduate and post-graduate study, offering more than 140 bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in fields including law, economy and management, literature and social sciences, and science and technology.
UCP is noted for its extensive research in the field of material sciences, the technology of embedded intelligence, law and political science.
The institution has entered into more than 300 partnership agreements with about 240 foreign higher educational institutions across Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.
Thousands of foreign students attend UCP each year within the framework of various exchange programmes, including Erasmus and Crepuq, while bilateral partnership agreements have been reached with universities in Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, the United States and Vietnam.
Cergy-Pontoise, a new town created in the 1970s, owes its name to two of the communes that it covers, and since its foundation has seen its population quadruple to more than 180,000.
