Napoleon's 'expedition' of Egypt wasn't exactly scientific. Contrary to what you might think, Napoleon invaded Egypt in an attempt to march an army to India to deal considerable damage to the British war effort, but since Nelson made a rather daring attack in 1798 that resulted in the Battle of the Nile, Napoleon was stuck in Egypt with no clear way of achieving his goals.

Napoleon actually contacted the main enemy to the British in India, Tipu Sahib, telling him to expect the 'arrival on the shores of the Red Sea with a numerous and invincible army, animated with the desire of delivering you from the iron yoke of England' (Roberts, 2014, p. 186).

Napoleon's further ideas of attacking forts such as Jaffa, Haifa and Acre were all 'to deny the Royal Navy the use of Levantine ports' (p. 185).

If you're referring to what Napoleon actually did in areas such as Cairo, he was merely imposing what he did often in his campaigns, which were establishing modern governmental systems. This quote from Andrew Roberts (cited above) gives us a clear outline of exactly what Napoleon did:

‘By direct decree…established a postal system, street lighting and cleaning, a coach service between Cairo and Alexandria, a mint and rational tax system with lower impositions on the Egyptian fellaheen (peasantry) than the Mamluks’ extortionary demands. He also abolished feudalism, replacing it with rule by the diwans, set up a new French trading company, built modern plague hospitals and produced Egypt’s first printed books’ (Roberts, 2014, p. 173-174)

So, you can see that Napoleon never invaded Egypt with the express idea of conducting scientific expeditions but it was all to do with the war with Britain. He was attempting to reach India to push the British out, and failing that, attempted to deny the British access to strategic ports in Eastern Mediterranean.

Hope I helped!

Source: Roberts, A, (2014), Napoleon the Great, Penguin Group, London