URGENSEA Challenge - Fondation Andurand

First edition of URGENSEA - The Andurand Trophy, an engineering challenge that will unfold over 2024 and 2025.

URGENSEA is aimed at engineering students across 5 European countries: France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands. The purpose of the challenge is to mobilize engineering resources to the rescue of the sea and to call on science to help us better decipher climate threats, identify new solutions or complement and fine-tune existing ones.

Working in teams of 5 to 10, the students will design, develop, complete, improve or refine innovations and solutions related to the two themes of the Challenge:

  - River plastic pollution

  - Coastal erosion


From September 2024 to October 2025, the teams will have to commit to the various stages of their project, from brainstorming to designing and then deploying their solution.


To help students along the way and increase their chance of success, the Andurand Foundation has marked out and cleared the ground, providing them with a database of tested and deployed solutions. This wealth of information saves students a considerable amount of research time and provides them with a source of inspiration for potentially enriching or improving existing solutions. In addition to this knowledge database, we are providing the teams access to invaluable  expertise through the support of a Mentoring platform.

Well beyond a classic challenge, URGENSEA operates as an accelerator that mobilizes its knowledge and networks to better support the participating teams and optimize their input.


100,000 euros have been allocated to this first 2024-2025 edition of the Andurand Trophy. Each of the 6 winning teams (3 in each category) will receive the Scaphandre, and shall earn between €8,000 and €18,000.

More information: https://fondationandurand.org/urgensea/