This special issue of INSIGHT section includes the main contributions presented in workshops that have held during the Systems Engineering Academia-Industry Forum. The aim of this issue is to provide an overview of the French research in the domain of Systems Engineering. This Systems Engineering Academia-Industry Forum is organized by AFIS (Association Française d'Ingénierie Système), the French chapter of INCOSE, and supported by French universities as a regular series, usually every two years. This forum provides the opportunity for both academics and industrials to debate on:-Educate systems engineering and develop competences in systems engineering for professional situations,-Develop and promote the research in systems engineering. Thus, workshops and plenary lectures are held during the forum in order to cover the theme of education, research and practices of systems engineering. In December 2014, the fifth edition of the forum was held in Cergy-Pontoise with the support of the university of Cergy-Pontoise. This edition was dedicated to the important subject of "Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Engineering Based on Models" that has been broken down in 11 topics: ‐ Model based Systems Engineering, ‐ Research activities in Systems Engineering, ‐ From the Systems Engineering deployed by the Gen X to the Systems Thinking needed by the Gen Y, ‐ Model based Systems Engineering and PLM: which challenge, ‐ Innovation and Systems Engineering: discrepancy or complementarity, ‐ Systems Engineering and SysML for education in secondary schools, ‐ Architecture and allocation of requirements, ‐ From Design To the Operations, ‐ Pedagogies and Systems Engineering: challenges and issues, ‐ ROBAFIS challenge that is organized by AFIS and that promotes project-based collaborative learning in SE, ‐ Doctoral program in Systems Engineering as a challenge for Research in French universities. This last topic has given rise to a specific workshop, the doctoral seminar, offering the opportunity for doctoral students to present and to discuss their doctoral works concerned by Systems Engineering, with academics and industrials.