30 June 2026
Entente Cordiale Day : Students Recognised for a Project on Disinformation
A team competing under the banner of Les Jeunes IHEDN, including a student from the CyberSchool consortium, secured second place in the Entente Cordiale Day Challenge.
Binational Challenge Bringing Together Prestigious French and British Institutions
The Entente Cordiale Day aims to promote Franco-British relations and contribute to joint reflection on today’s most pressing global issues.
The 2025–2026 edition brought together more than 700 students from leading institutions, including HEC Paris, Sciences Po Paris, Sorbonne University, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and King’s College London. Romain Debreu, a first-year Master’s student in Cybersecurity, Science of Software and Hardware Security at the University of Rennes, took part in the Entente Cordiale Day Challenge under the banner of Les Jeunes IHEDN, alongside Métisse Clain and Jeanne Dannenhoffer, both students specialising in international relations.
Participants were tasked with producing a solution-oriented research report in response to the theme “Conflict, Technology and World Security”. The submissions were assessed by a panel of academic and professional experts. Ten teams from each country were then selected to take part in the Summit, where they presented their work orally before a jury comprising representatives from academia, public policy and related professional sectors.
A Team Focused on Tackling Disinformation
The Jeunes IHEDN team chose to focus its work on combating disinformation. Their report put forward a range of techno-political solutions, built around cooperation between willing states and purely technical approaches.
Their work drew on the cybersecurity education provided by ISTIC (University of Rennes), particularly in the fields of cryptography and privacy protection. CyberSchool events, such as The Cyber Thursdays and the Winter Research School, also helped shape their thinking by providing broader perspectives on cybersecurity challenges, careers and research.
The team was awarded the Chirac Prize, corresponding to second place in the French ranking. In early June, the three students were received at the Élysée Palace in recognition of the quality of their contribution.