Miri­an Kubo has been a lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­site de Tech­nolo­gie de Com­pieg­ne (UTC) since 2021 and has been head of the IAA (Inno­va­tion, Food, Agrore­sources) course in Bio­log­i­cal Engi­neer­ing (GB) since 2023.

It was dur­ing her stud­ies in agro-food engi­neer­ing in Brazil that she had the oppor­tu­ni­ty — dur­ing a one-year uni­ver­si­ty exchange — to join UTC at the end of her course. It was a year in which she first fol­lowed the GB course and then went on to do a the­sis in food process engi­neer­ing at ONIRIS, Nantes. 

What was the sub­ject of her the­sis? «The aim was to eval­u­ate and mod­el the mul­ti­phys­i­cal process­es involved in microwave heat­ing for the inac­ti­va­tion of enzymes in fruit juices», she says. She returned to Brazil to do a post-doc at the Esco­la Politécnica/ USP in São Paulo, then joined the UNESP uni­ver­si­ty as a post-doc while com­bin­ing with some teach­ing (ATER).

In 2021, she came back to UTC where she joins Claire Rossi’s research team at the GEC lab­o­ra­to­ry, teach­ing cours­es on GB, agri-food and nutri­tion. It was only nat­ur­al that she should teach part of the SP-11 course. «There are two parts: one on phys­i­o­log­i­cal adap­ta­tion to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, the oth­er on nutri­tion. For my part, I teach sub­jects relat­ing to diet, sleep and the micro­bio­ta. In this course, we look at the macro- and micronu­tri­ent require­ments of healthy indi­vid­u­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly ath­letes. Car­bo­hy­drates and pro­teins are very impor­tant macronu­tri­ents for ath­letes, for exam­ple. We also call on exter­nal lec­tur­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty, who talk about the effects of nutri­tion on human health, in par­tic­u­lar on the health of peo­ple suf­fer­ing from chron­ic ill­ness­es», explains Miri­an Kubo.

A project with Tom Laperche

Her skills in nutri­tion and a dis­cus­sion with Arnaud Van­i­cat­te led her to set up a stu­dent ori­ent­ed project for skip­per Tom Laperche ahead of his solo round-the-world race next Jan­u­ary. «As part of the BT0‑7 UV (For­mu­la­tion, Inno­va­tion, Nutri­tion), under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of Prof. Claire Rossi, we are work­ing on the devel­op­ment of health­i­er, more nutri­tious food prod­ucts com­pared with more con­ven­tion­al prod­ucts. Take cakes, for exam­ple. In gen­er­al, they are too sweet and fat­ty. We are going to mod­i­fy the for­mu­la­tion so that they are less sweet and low­er in fat but still taste good. In this UV, we set up projects with the stu­dents. This semes­ter, they will be for­mu­lat­ing and devel­op­ing prod­ucts to meet Tom’s per­son­al and sport­ing needs», she concludes.