Pro­fes­sor Frédéric Lamar­que teach­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty (UTC) and also is a research sci­en­tist at UTC’s Rober­val laboratory’s Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing depart­ment. Since July 2023, he has been UTC’s Direc­tor of Research ; his term of office runs for 3 years.

Since he joined UTC in 2000, Frédéric Lamar­que has held var­i­ous posi­tions with­in the insti­tu­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, he head­ed the Mechan­i­cal Sys­tems Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment from end 2012 to end of 2016 and was one of the key play­ers in the merg­er of this ISM Depart­ment with the Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing depart­ment. After a break from man­age­ment roles, he took over in March 2022 as Head of the UTC IG (Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing) Depart­ment, and in July 2023 he was appoint­ed Direc­tor of Research for UTC. This demand­ing role has meant that he has had to reduce his teach­ing and research time in order to bet­ter man­age the activ­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with his new role. In prac­ti­cal terms what does this imply?

In prac­ti­cal terms what does this imply? «As Direc­tor of Research, my job is to devel­op new inter­ac­tions with part­ners such as the Hauts-de-France Region, the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance, the CNRS, oth­er the Uni­ver­si­ties of Tech­nol­o­gy (UTs), indus­tri­al part­ners, etc., as well as rep­re­sent­ing the insti­tu­tion on a num­ber of steer­ing com­mit­tees for research pro­grammes where UTC is involved and has com­mit­ments. The aim is also to enrich and enhance UTC’s pro­file both nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly and to seize the best oppor­tu­ni­ties for devel­op­ing the institution’s research in line with the research strat­e­gy recent­ly approved by the Board of Direc­tors. I have been able, nonethe­less, to main­tain some time for teach­ing in my spe­cial­i­ty — optics and sen­sors — and am also pur­su­ing my research activ­i­ties», he explains.

Can you illus­trate please, with an exam­ple? “Yes indeed, with the PARS project, a Fran­co-Ger­man project sup­port­ed by the ANR. PARS is being car­ried out in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Braun­schweig Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy. Our aim? To devel­op a new instru­ment to mea­sure the size and shape of nanopar­ti­cles in a flu­id medi­um. The UTC’s role in PARS is to intro­duce small restric­tions in microchan­nels through which a flu­id con­tain­ing nanopar­ti­cles flows.

These restric­tions are posi­tioned at well-cho­sen points and are con­trolled using opti­cal­ly-con­trolled micro actu­a­tors so as not to inter­fere with the elec­tri­cal mea­sure­ment of very low-ampli­tude sig­na­tures. The medi­um-term goal is to be able to iden­ti­fy and sort nanopar­ti­cles, this hav­ing appli­ca­tions in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of new drugs and vac­cines. This project was con­ceived and agreed dur­ing the Covid peri­od», con­cludes Frédéric Lamarque.