The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France's public institution for scientific research, is a vital member of this university network.

Collaboratively, private and public higher education institutions in the Lyon region pool resources to advance and promote scientific research.

Notable figures also include Ume Kenjirō, architect of the Japanese civil code and former law faculty student, Cédric Villani, Fields Medal recipient and alumnus of Lyon-III, astrophysicist Hélène Courtois, pioneer of criminal anthropology Alexandre Lacassagne, and Louis Léopold Ollier, founding figure in modern orthopedic surgery.

Lyon has historically been an industrious and mercantile city, oriented towards free trade and commerce due to its geographical location: at the confluence of the Saône and Rhône rivers, near Switzerland and Italy, on the route between northern and southern Europe.

Primarily a merchant city under the Ancien Régime, Lyon does not have a long university history: this delay is partly due to the fear that education would divert young people from commerce and industry.

Amidst the religious wars between Catholic and Huguenots, the director of the institution, the poet Barthélemy Aneau, was massacred in 1561, accused of sympathising with the Reformation.

Besides a theatre, a library, and an observatory, the Collège de la Trinité incorporated numerous buildings not primarily intended for education, including eight congregation chapels.

The Edgar Faure law aimed to grant greater autonomy to faculties and break with the highly centralised vision that had governed higher education in France since 1896.

UdL, on behalf of its member institutions, oversees several major projects related to the "Investments for the Future" programme, for which it has secured nearly one billion euros in funding.

The University of Lyon's SATT, called PULSALYS, has a budget of €57 million over 10 years to strengthen the collaboration between fundamental research and entrepreneurship.