The University of Lille is a French public research university based in Lille, Hauts-de-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 74,000 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.