The University of Lille (French: Université de Lille, abbreviated as ULille, UDL or univ-lille) is a French public research university based in Lille, in the Nord department of Upper France. It has its origins in the University of Douai (1559), and resulted from the merger of three universities – Lille 1 University of Science and Technology, Lille 2 University of Health and Law, and Charles de Gaulle University – Lille III in 2018. With more than 80,000 students, it is one of the largest universities in France and one of the largest French-speaking universities in the world. Since 2017, the university has been funded as one of the French universities of excellence. It benefits from an endowment of 500 million euros to accelerate its strategy in education, research, international development and outreach. With 66 research labs, 350 PhD theses supported per year and 3,000 scientific publications each year, it is well represented in the research community; it collaborates with many organizations (Pasteur Institute of Lille, CHU Lille University Hospital, CNRS, INSERM, INRA, INRIA etc.) and schools (École Centrale de Lille, École des Mines-Télécom de Lille-Douai (IMT Lille Douai), Sciences Po Lille etc.). Until 2019, the university was the main component of the Community of Universities and Institutions (COMUE) Lille Nord de France. It still operates the European Doctoral College, which federates universities and other higher learning institutes in the Hauts-de-France region. Source: Wikipedia (en)