Bastien Lahetjuzan, Sorosh Samiei and Marie Crémil­lieu won awards at the Alliance Sor­bonne Uni­ver­sité finals of the 2026 edi­tion of the “My The­sis in 180 Sec­onds” (MT180) com­pe­ti­tion. Anoth­er way to dis­cov­er the full rich­ness of doc­tor­al research at UTC.

Three UTC doc­tor­al stu­dents dis­tin­guished them­selves at the Alliance Sor­bonne Uni­ver­sité finals of the “My The­sis in 180 Sec­onds” com­pe­ti­tion, win­ning three awards in dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. Bastien Lahetjuzan received the First Prize from the jury, earn­ing him first place. Sorosh Samiei received the Third Prize from the jury, and Marie Crémil­lieu won the High School Stu­dents’ Prize. The MT180 com­pe­ti­tion is an exer­cise in sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion in which doc­tor­al stu­dents present their research top­ic in exact­ly 3 min­utes. It is a major chal­lenge that requires sci­en­tif­ic rigour, teach­ing skills and the abil­i­ty to explain com­plex con­cepts in layman’s terms. This year, the Alliance Sor­bonne Uni­ver­sité finals fea­tured a wide vari­ety of top­ics, rang­ing from phi­los­o­phy to chem­istry, includ­ing lin­guis­tics, neu­ro­science, and biol­o­gy. “It pro­vides a way to make research acces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic, so you have to sum­ma­rize what you’re doing in three min­utes — 180 sec­onds. It real­ly has to be acces­si­ble to a gen­er­al audience—you have to explain the issue, but with­out get­ting too bogged down in details, using words that every­one can under­stand. I think this is a tru­ly inter­est­ing exer­cise for doc­tor­al stu­dents. It forces them to take a step back from their top­ic, put them­selves in the lis­ten­ers’ shoes, and try to explain what their work is all about,” empha­sizes Chris­tine Prelle, direc­tor of the doc­tor­al school.

Promoting the dissemination of knowledge to the general public

Marie Crémil­lieu enrolled at UTC in the gen­er­al stud­ies pro­gramme after earn­ing a sci­ence-focused high school diplo­ma, before con­tin­u­ing on to the elec­tive spe­cial­ty Process Engi­neer­ing pro­gramme. She also com­plet­ed a Master’s degree in For­mu­lat­ed Prod­ucts Engi­neer­ing before begin­ning her dis­ser­ta­tion at the UTC-TIMR lab­o­ra­to­ry. She hopes to pur­sue a career as a researcher in indus­try, while main­tain­ing a focus on edu­ca­tion and sci­ence out­reach in her work. Between orga­niz­ing “Pint of Sci­ence”, a local edi­tion of the world’s largest sci­ence fes­ti­val, a con­fer­ence and her the­sis work, she looks back with us on her MT180 adven­ture. “I’m very pas­sion­ate about sci­ence out­reach to the gen­er­al pub­lic. I had already par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Nuits de la Recherche and the Fête de la Sci­ence, where I was able to present my research to UTC stu­dents, school­child­ren of all ages, as well as res­i­dents and fam­i­lies in Com­piègne. Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the MT180 com­pe­ti­tion was there­fore a nat­ur­al exten­sion of this approach: bring­ing sci­ence out of the lab­o­ra­to­ries and mak­ing it acces­si­ble to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, beyond the local lev­el.” After pass­ing the ini­tial selec­tion round, she com­pet­ed in the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance’s local final on March 19. The High School Stu­dents’ Prize she received allowed her to com­pete in the Paris region­al final, which took place on April 9.

Training Sessions and Stage Presence

The Sor­bonne Uni­ver­sité Doc­tor­al Col­lege pre­pared the can­di­dates through sev­er­al train­ing ses­sions with a coach spe­cial­iz­ing in pub­lic speak­ing, who has been work­ing with them for sev­er­al years. But the prepa­ra­tion didn’t stop there: the advice and dis­cus­sions with the oth­er par­tic­i­pants were very stim­u­lat­ing as they worked on their angles of pre­sen­ta­tion. “Until the first final, I prac­ticed most­ly on my own, then in front of my the­sis advi­sor. I want­ed to keep it a sur­prise for my fam­i­ly, friends, and col­leagues who came to watch the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty final so they could see my pre­sen­ta­tion live on stage. Then, for the region­al final, most of the work was done, but there were still details to fine-tune: cer­tain words, paus­es, body lan­guage… Right up until the night before, I was still improv­ing my script! We also had to adapt our stage pres­ence to the tech­ni­cal con­di­tions.” Her top­ic? 3D print­ing of stim­u­la­ble func­tion­al­ized bio­ma­te­ri­als. “I was par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to this the­sis top­ic because of its mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary nature. It draws on exper­tise in for­mu­la­tion and chem­istry to devel­op the gel I’m print­ing, in process­es and mechan­ics to opti­mize 3D print­ing — an inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy — as well as in biol­o­gy for the ulti­mate bio­med­ical appli­ca­tion of my biomaterial.”

“I was struck by the richness and diversity of the research”

For Sorosh Samiei, a doc­tor­al stu­dent in bio­process engi­neer­ing, it all began dur­ing his cap­stone intern­ship at L’Oréal, where he par­tic­i­pat­ed in an inter­nal ver­sion of the com­pe­ti­tion titled “My Project in 180 Sec­onds,” pre­sent­ing his intern­ship project to the company’s advanced research com­mu­ni­ty. “The exer­cise turned out to be much more reward­ing than I had antic­i­pat­ed. It allowed me to build some valu­able con­nec­tions and to appre­ci­ate the pow­er of sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the gen­er­al pub­lic. That’s when I decid­ed that, as soon as I start­ed my PhD, I would embark on the real adven­ture.” Sorosh made it a point to prac­tice every evening at the office, once his col­leagues had left, rehears­ing with a stop­watch, iden­ti­fy­ing pas­sages that lost momen­tum, choos­ing where to insert paus­es, and refin­ing every word. This metic­u­lous prac­tice gave him, on the big day, a pre­cious free­dom: the free­dom to be ful­ly present for the audi­ence rather than absorbed in his own notes. “The two finals—the one at the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance, fol­lowed by the one for the Paris region, were mem­o­rable expe­ri­ences. As I dis­cov­ered the oth­er can­di­dates’ projects at the same time as the audi­ence, I was struck by the rich­ness and diver­si­ty of the research being con­duct­ed today. The stress, how­ev­er, was very real. But once on stage, every­thing picks up speed in the best pos­si­ble way. A brief inter­ac­tion with the host cre­ates an ini­tial con­nec­tion even before the 180 sec­onds begin. Then time flies by at a dizzy­ing pace. What I was look­ing for above all else was a con­nec­tion with the audi­ence: hav­ing them for three min­utes is both a short and a long time. Both times, I had the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing their eyes locked on to me, hear­ing laugh­ter at just the right moments and receiv­ing applause that was worth more than any award.”

Talking About biogas and sustainable aviation fuel

Sorosh Samiei works on anaer­o­bic diges­tion, the process that con­verts biowaste into bio­gas. His the­sis is part of a Euro­pean project (Inter­reg OBIWAN) that takes this ambi­tion even fur­ther: con­vert­ing this bio­gas into sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel. To achieve this, bio­gas pro­duc­tion must be sta­ble, both in terms of flow rate and com­po­si­tion. How­ev­er, the feed­stock enter­ing the process is sub­ject to sig­nif­i­cant sea­son­al and region­al vari­a­tions. His work specif­i­cal­ly focus­es on man­ag­ing these irreg­u­lar­i­ties by com­bin­ing numer­i­cal mod­el­ling, exper­i­men­ta­tion and con­trol sys­tems. “I began my stud­ies in phar­ma­cy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences in Tehran, before going on to earn a bachelor’s degree in life sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lor­raine, fol­lowed by a Master’s degree in Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing and Bio­pro­duc­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mont­pel­li­er. I am cur­rent­ly in my first year of PhD stud­ies at UTC, at the inter­sec­tion of biol­o­gy and process engi­neer­ing. I am deeply pas­sion­ate about research and devel­op­ment — not as an end in itself, but as a cat­a­lyst for trans­for­ma­tion. I am con­vinced that sci­en­tif­ic work is only tru­ly accom­plished when it leaves the lab­o­ra­to­ry to gen­er­ate prod­ucts that improve dai­ly life and cre­ate val­ue in the real econ­o­my. It is in this space, between inno­va­tion and its imple­men­ta­tion, that I want to forge my path.” n KD

3 000 PhDs have graduated from the UTC doctoral school since 1985

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy of Com­piègne has devot­ed a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of its activ­i­ties to train­ing in and through research—that is, to the doc­tor­al  pro­gramme. As ear­ly as 1985, when the state doc­tor­ate was abol­ished and the uni­fied doc­tor­ate was cre­at­ed, UTC estab­lished its own doc­tor­al school, even though there was not yet a stan­dard­ized frame­work at the nation­al lev­el. “Based on an idea by Dominique Barthez, a pro­fes­sor at UTC, the cre­ation of this struc­ture aimed to define a com­pre­hen­sive post­grad­u­ate train­ing pol­i­cy and to fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion among UTC’s var­i­ous research teams on its tech­no­log­i­cal research agen­da, which is inher­ent­ly mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary. The pur­pose of this doc­tor­al school was to man­age stu­dent recruit­ment and mon­i­tor­ing, har­mo­nize course  pro­grammes across UTC’s var­i­ous spe­cial­iza­tions UTC, and to offer shared cross-dis­ci­pli­nary cours­es to pro­vide stu­dents with a sol­id sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion,” explains Chris­tine Prelle, direc­tor of the UTC doc­tor­al school. Since 1985, the doc­tor­al school has award­ed PhD degrees to approx­i­mate­ly 3 000 doc­tor­al grad­u­ates. Today, it sup­ports multidisciplinary—and even interdisciplinary—technological research more than ever, recruit­ing doc­tor­al can­di­dates from 11 research lab­o­ra­to­ries. All are fund­ed for at least three years and can pur­sue their doc­tor­ates in var­i­ous settings.

KD