NSU Students Complete CESI Summer School 2026 in France. North South University has welcomed back five students who recently completed the CESI International Summer School 2026, a programme themed “Smart Healthcare & AI: Building Tomorrow’s Healthcare Solutions.” Held from 29 June to 10 July at CESI École d’Ingénieurs’ Caen campus in Normandy, the two-week course brought together students from Computer Science & Engineering, Pharmacy, and Biochemistry & Biotechnology a mix that turned out to suit the programme’s healthcare-and-technology focus rather well.
The curriculum moved through a fairly wide range of emerging tech, covering artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision and medical imaging, IoT, digital twins, and 3D printing, all framed around what the organizers call Industry 5.0 and responsible innovation in healthcare. Rather than sticking to lectures alone, the programme leaned heavily on workshops, industry discussions, and hands-on project work.
The standout moment, by most accounts, was a Design Thinking Hackathon built around a real challenge posed by Laboratoires Gilbert. The NSU team worked on an AI-based prototype tied to intellectual property and patent-related processes, while also weighing the ethical limits of automation and where human judgment still needs to take precedence. Their submission ended up being singled out by CESI faculty and assessors as the strongest entry in the hackathon a notable result for a five-student delegation competing against a genuinely international field.
Classroom learning aside, the students also got a look at how healthcare technology plays out in practice, with visits to Centre François Baclesse to study AI applications in oncology imaging, and to Cyceron, a biomedical imaging research centre. Both stops gave the group a closer look at how research translates into actual clinical and diagnostic tools.
Part of what made the experience stand out was simply who else was in the room. Participants came from Tunisia, Poland, India, France, Bangladesh, and Canada, spanning fields from computer science and pharmacy to biomedical engineering a setup that pushed students to collaborate and problem-solve across both disciplinary and cultural lines.
Outside the academic schedule, the group also took in some of Normandy’s history and culture, with visits to Caen, the Mémorial de Caen, and Mont-Saint-Michel rounding out what became a fairly balanced mix of coursework, professional exposure, and cultural immersion.
By the end of the two weeks, participants had picked up more than technical know-how in smart healthcare technologies. Organizers point to interdisciplinary teamwork, design thinking, ethical reasoning, and adaptability as the less obvious but arguably more lasting takeaways from the trip.
NSU’s Office of External Affairs, which supports these kinds of international opportunities, said the goal is to connect students with global institutions, emerging technologies, and real-world problems that go beyond what a regular classroom can offer. The university has congratulated its students on completing the CESI International Summer School 2026, welcoming them home with new skills, international friendships, and a broader outlook that officials expect will carry into their academic and professional paths ahead.