Far from count­ing days spent in the lab doing research, writ­ing sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles or his the­sis, a PhD offers oth­er dimen­sions. Among the 250 doc­tor­al stu­dents at UTC, Thomas Roul­leau divides his time between Com­piègne, Chartres, Paris and Milan. Founder of the UT’­Clock asso­ci­a­tion and a self-employed busi­ness ded­i­cat­ed to his pas­sion for the art of watch­mak­ing, Thomas Roul­leau steers his ship with pre­ci­sion, watch in hand.

Accept­ed to fol­low the Busi­ness Foun­da­tions Cer­tifi­cate pro­gramme at the Euro­pean Insti­tute of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion (INSEAD) in Sep­tem­ber, Thomas Roul­leau hopes to “acquire man­age­r­i­al and strate­gic skills, to round out his skills and show­case his tech­ni­cal exper­tise in busi­ness with a view to work­ing in strate­gic R&D posi­tions in indus­try.” The 24-year-old PhD stu­dent, major­ing in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing with the spe­cial­ty option of indus­tri­al design, is cur­rent­ly focussing his research on pre­dic­tive fault detec­tion in indus­tri­al valve prod­ucts. “These are main­ly sole­noid dri­ven valves used in a vari­ety of sec­tors, from cof­fee machines to nuclear pow­er plants and car man­u­fac­tur­ing. Warn­ing cus­tomers of a com­po­nent fail­ure is essen­tial.” His aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground and time at UTC have shaped his ver­sa­til­i­ty. “I appre­ci­ate the UTC mod­el for the free­dom it offers to choose one’s cours­es and train for a degree that is in line with your future plans. Choos­ing to do a PhD here was there­fore an obvi­ous choice,” says Thomas Roul­leau. The the­sis he has been work­ing on since Jan­u­ary 2024 under the super­vi­sion of Frédéric Lamar­que, in a part­ner­ship with Emer­son, his employ­er and indus­tri­al part­ner under the CIFRE (Indus­tri­al Train­ing through Research) pro­gramme, will enable him to spe­cialise in a par­tic­u­lar field and learn work­ing meth­ods that will make him more effi­cient in his research. “And it will enable me to take on respon­si­bil­i­ties and hold strate­gic posi­tions in project man­age­ment,” he empha­sis­es. “The Rober­val lab­o­ra­to­ry to which I am attached pro­vides sup­port and the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge. My work at Emer­son, a large com­pa­ny with near­ly 80 000 employ­ees, is based in Chartres and Milan, Italy. This adds inter­na­tion­al val­ue to my PhD. If tomor­row Emer­son does­n’t have the mate­r­i­al or tech­no­log­i­cal answers for the man­u­fac­tur­ing of pro­to­types, UTC will be able to step in. It’s a real part­ner­ship.” For Thomas Roul­leau, pur­su­ing a the­sis is both “per­son­al­ly demand­ing and a col­lec­tive project fuelled by team dynam­ics. Chal­leng­ing your­self is a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple, with the aim of com­ing up with inno­v­a­tive and rel­e­vant solu­tions. It’s edu­ca­tion­al and stimulating.”

A passionate craftsman

Thomas Roul­leau also has a pas­sion for art and watch­mak­ing, which he teach­es at the watch­mak­ing depart­ment of the Lycée Diderot in Paris. For the founder of the UTC’s UT’­Clock asso­ci­a­tion, which has been pro­mot­ing this ‘niche’ field and the art of pre­ci­sion mechan­ics through work­shops since 2022, “time can be found. What you need is moti­va­tion. I have quite a few activ­i­ties and I always make sure I can pur­sue them along­side my pas­sion for watch­mak­ing.’ Under­stand­ing the mech­a­nisms, the meth­ods of dis­man­tling and reassem­bling, work­ing metic­u­lous­ly on jew­ellery and gold­smithing pieces, from pock­et watch­es to excep­tion­al clocks, is an infi­nite­ly rich expe­ri­ence for the PhD stu­dent. The offi­cial launch in Feb­ru­ary of his own busi­ness repair­ing and restor­ing time­pieces to the high­est stan­dards fur­ther con­firms his enthu­si­asm, nes­tled in a work­shop near Chartres. “Artis­tic crafts­man­ship is a soli­tary and calm­ing activ­i­ty. It’s a break, a moment of reflec­tion with myself. I always feel like I’m doing some­thing excit­ing, stim­u­lat­ing and inter­est­ing. In every respect, I nev­er feel tired or bored.’ Ulti­mate­ly, a PhD is all about mechan­ics, far from the cliché of the soli­tary researcher.

“Welcoming PhD students advances research”

The webi­nar “Engi­neers, dare a PhD!” organ­ised on March 11,2025 by UTC and its part­ners (REDOC SPI, ABG, CGE and Cde­fi) aimed to encour­age peo­ple to get involved in research, dis­pel pre­con­cep­tions and answer ques­tions from poten­tial appli­cants. For Thomas Roul­leau, “a PhD should not be seen as three years of addi­tion­al study, but as a gen­uine paid pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence, with con­sid­er­able added val­ue, in which we are entrust­ed with spe­cif­ic tasks.” Requir­ing a min­i­mum of three years’ pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence in a uni­ver­si­ty lab­o­ra­to­ry, a research organ­i­sa­tion or a research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion cen­tre with­in a com­pa­ny, a PhD is pre­pared as a post-mas­ter’s degree. At UTC, near­ly 250 doc­tor­al stu­dents, the vast major­i­ty of whom are employed on a 35- hour per week basis (includ­ing more than 60 new enrol­ments each year), are prepar­ing a the­sis with­in its eight research units recog­nised by the Min­istry of Research (Avenues, BMBI, Costech, GEC, LMAC, Rober­val, TIMR and Heudi­asyc) and the Inter­act unit at Uni­LaSalle Beau­vais. This is also linked to the strate­gies devel­oped by the insti­tu­tion and its part­ners in biotech­nol­o­gy, bio­engi­neer­ing, com­put­er sci­ence, applied math­e­mat­ics, indus­tri­al engi­neer­ing, etc. “Wel­com­ing doc­tor­al stu­dents advances research with­in the lab­o­ra­to­ries and enhances the insti­tu­tion’s rep­u­ta­tion. Doing research means accept­ing that you are not fol­low­ing a pre­de­ter­mined path that will take you from point A to point B. It’s very dif­fer­ent from being an engi­neer,” says Chris­tine Prelle, direc­tor of the UTC doc­tor­al school, one of the 40 mem­bers of the Nation­al Net­work of Doc­tor­al Schools in Engi­neer­ing Sci­ences (REDOC SPI). Appli­ca­tions are select­ed and approved through mul­ti­ple inter­views and a final jury to ensure that appli­cants are moti­vat­ed and have the right skills. Not all of them are UTC stu­dents, but wel­com­ing them into our PhD pro­gramme, because we know them, is an asset in min­imis­ing the risk of them drop­ping out along the way. As a step towards deep­en­ing an orig­i­nal approach or field of study, the PhD pro­gramme ben­e­fits from fund­ing spe­cif­ic to UTC, fund­ing agree­ments with com­pa­nies such as the Cifre scheme, as well as nation­al and Euro­pean co-funding.

IL