Paris-Saclay University (French: Université Paris-Saclay, pronounced [ynivɛʁsite paʁi saklɛ]) is a combined technological research institute and public research university in Orsay, France. Paris-Saclay was established in 2019 after the merger of four technical grandes écoles, as well as several technological institutes, engineering schools, and research facilities; giving it fifteen constituent colleges with over 48,000 students combined.
With the merger, the French government has explicitly voiced their wish to rival top American technological research institutes, such as MIT. The university has over 275 laboratories in particle physics, nuclear physics, astrophysics, atomic physics and molecular physics, condensed matter physics, theoretical physics, electronics, nanoscience and nanotechnology. It is part of the larger Paris-Saclay cluster, which is a research-intensive academic campus encompassing Paris-Saclay University, the Polytechnic Institute of Paris, combined with a business cluster for high-technology corporations. Paris-Saclay notably also includes the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, where many contributions to the development of modern mathematics have been made, among them modern algebraic geometry and catastrophe theory.
