Aurélien VAUQUELIN, a PhD-engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate from UTC-Com­pieg­ne and lau­re­ate of the UTC-PhD Prize in 2011, estab­lished a pri­vate com­pa­ny ERACLES TECHNOLOGIES, after his CIFRE* the­sis with VALEO ELECTRIC SYSTEMS. 

Can you briefly describe your PhD subject?

“My the­sis con­sist­ed of find­ing ways to improve elec­tric action­ers fit­ted with per­ma­nent mag­nets as used in the auto­mo­bile indus­try. The stud­ies I car­ried out allow you to gain a more detailed under­stand­ing of how this sort of oper­a­tional mode, there­by opti­mis­ing their oper­a­tion and hence lead­ing to an improved ener­gy effi­cien­cy. While I was study­ing these fac­tors, I had top keep in mind the eco­nom­ic con­straints that impact on the mar­kets for large-scale mass-pro­duc­tion of these parts for the auto­mo­bile sector.” 

Tell us then why you registered for a CIFRE Thesis?

“My objec­tive, in tak­ing up such a the­sis was to play an inter­face role, viz. between the aca­d­e­m­ic and the indus­tri­al worlds. Half of my the­sis work was car­ried out in the Electro­mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry (LEC) at UTC-Com­pieg­ne and the oth­er half direct­ly immersed in a team at VALEO. What I want­ed to do was to offer indus­try the sci­en­tif­ic acu­men I had gained at the uni­ver­si­ty. Divid­ing my time in this way enabled me to bet­ter under­stand the needs, the chal­lenges and the spe­cif­ic nature of each world. The rig­or­ous think­ing we learn at the uni­ver­si­ty, asso­ci­at­ed with the con­straints that impact indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing and cost process­es rep­re­sent­ed ter­rif­ic chal­lenges for me. Even if some of the recruit­ing offi­cers see a doc­tor­al the­sis as the end-prod­uct of a uni­ver­si­ty sequence, I myself think that some arrange­ments, such as the CIFRE degree or the pos­si­bil­i­ty offered to doc­tor­al stu­dents to engage in advi­so­ry work with the pri­vate sec­tor, do tend to change men­tal­i­ties. As I see things, these recruit­ing spe­cial­ists should find the skills they are look­ing for ion the PhD grad­u­ate who has high lev­el com­pe­tence in a field that can be of imme­di­ate use and val­ue to a com­pa­ny direc­tor or to an entrepreneur.” 

And today, you have yourself become an entrepreneur?

“Sure! In par­al­lel to my stud­ies for my engi­neer­ing degree, I also did a rea­son­ably high stan­dard of cycling. Dur­ing one of my train­ing ses­sions, towards the end of 2005, the idea crossed my mind that one could effec­tive­ly stim­u­late a mus­cle with elec­tro-mechan­i­cal devices. The idea grew on me as I pro­ceed­ed with my advanced degree (DEA) and as I was doing my the­sis work. I had been award­ed sev­er­al dis­tinc­tions, among which I could quote the Aid to Inno­vat­ing tech­nol­o­gy Enter­prise Cre­ation con­test after which prize, I start­ed mak­ing pro­to­types for my idea, assess­ing the mar­ket pos­si­bil­i­ties, look­ing after the patent­ing, the fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies … Pall of this taught me that this par­tic­u­lar inno­va­tion had many appli­ca­tions, even out­side the world of high lev­el sport.”