Thier­ry Ribeiro is a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist in the University’s Indus­tri­al Engi­neer­ing depart­ment, one of the two depart­ments of UTC-TIMR (inte­grat­ed trans­for­ma­tion of renew­able mat­ter). As spe­cial­ist in bio­process engi­neer­ing, he works in par­tic­u­lar on methane pro­duc­tion process­es . He is the edu­ca­tion­al and sci­en­tif­ic coor­di­na­tor for the Chair for San­i­ta­tion Engi­neer­ing and Envi­ron­men­tal Inno­va­tion (IAIE) launched in July 2025.

The IAIE chair is coor­di­nat­ed by Ade­line Lécot and involves, in addi­tion to UTC-Com­pieg­ne, the Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance and the Paris Region Pub­lic San­i­ta­tion Ser­vice (SIAAP), a long-stand­ing part­ner of UTC, ever since the uni­ver­si­ty became involved in 2014 in the Mocopée project (Mod­el­ling, Con­trol and Opti­mi­sa­tion of Water Treat­ment Process­es), a pro­gramme that has gone through sev­er­al phas­es: Mocopée 1, Mocopée 2 and final­ly Mocopée 3. With Mocopée 3, part of the innEAU­va­tion pro­gramme involv­ing a large num­ber of aca­d­e­m­ic part­ners includ­ing UTC, SIAAP want­ed to go beyond the water treat­ment required by reg­u­la­tions by clear­ly posi­tion­ing itself in favour of val­ue-added resources. In this respect, the pub­lic oper­a­tor has changed its par­a­digm. It is no longer sole­ly focused on water treat­ment. Ques­tions arise: what do we do with the water as a by-prod­uct of the methane pro­duc­tion plant? Should we dis­charge it into the rivers, use it for irri­ga­tion, rein­ject it into the net­work or even turn it into drink­ing table water? How do we recov­er the nutri­ents such as nitro­gen, phos­pho­rus and potas­si­um con­tained in the water dis­charged by the cleans­ing plants? In addi­tion, we note that treat­ment plants pro­duce ener­gy, notably bio­gas. We are mov­ing beyond a log­ic of sim­ply treat­ing water to meet­ing stan­dards cor­re­spond­ing to the imple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies which, while respect­ing the main objec­tive, go fur­ther in val­oris­ing the by-products.

This fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion will take a new turn with the estab­lish­ment of the new­ly cre­at­ed Chair, also backed by the innEAU­va­tion programme.

What are the objec­tives of the chair? “The aim of this chair, with a man­date valid for five years, is to respond to a major chal­lenge: that of enhanc­ing the attrac­tive­ness of high­er edu­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the water, san­i­ta­tion and waste man­age­ment sec­tors, thus respond­ing to today’s cri­sis in recruit­ment observed in these pro­fes­sions. As far as we are con­cerned, inter alia, we need to struc­ture a train­ing pro­gramme for engi­neers that is both informed and enriched by the indus­tri­al real­i­ties in the field and the lat­est research and inno­va­tion results in terms of waste­water treat­ment and recov­ery. The idea is to revi­talise train­ing pro­grammes relat­ed to these indus­tri­al fields so that they can attract new tal­ents. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant giv­en that young peo­ple are increas­ing­ly con­cerned about envi­ron­men­tal issues, includ­ing water resources and waste recov­ery”, says Thier­ry Ribeiro.

“One aim is to con­nect high­er edu­ca­tion and indus­tri­al inno­va­tion by inte­grat­ing indus­tri­al issues into teach­ing in order to respond to cur­rent and future indus­tri­al chal­lenges. The sec­ond aim con­cerns research. The goal is to link teach­ing, aca­d­e­m­ic research and the inno­va­tion needs of pub­lic indus­try. with calls for expres­sions of inter­est, the aim here is to help bring projects to fruition – com­bin­ing sci­en­tif­ic and oper­a­tional inter­ests – which will then feed into the SIAAP research pro­grammes, such as Mocopée and MeSeine”, adds Ade­line Lécot.

How will the chair work? “The IAIE Chair pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cov­er the indus­tri­al world of san­i­ta­tion and waste in a prac­ti­cal way through vis­its to waste­water treat­ment and recov­ery plants, organ­is­ing “open days” on indus­tri­al inno­va­tions in the sec­tor and hold­ing the­mat­ic web and live lec­ture ses­sions with spe­cial­ists in the field. The Chair’s part­ners will also ben­e­fit from priv­i­leged access to the edu­ca­tion­al and oper­a­tional con­tent pro­duced by the innEAU­va­tion ini­tia­tive and its ded­i­cat­ed web­site. Final­ly, train­ing through research will be high­light­ed dur­ing Hack­EAU­tons, where ‘project’ groups bring­ing togeth­er stu­dents from the var­i­ous part­ner train­ing pro­grammes to work on top­ics relat­ed to san­i­ta­tion engi­neer­ing and envi­ron­men­tal inno­va­tion. The rewards for stu­dents include an in-depth dis­cov­ery of the sec­tor, a great col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence to add to their CVs, and not for­get­ting prize awards for the three best per­form­ers”, empha­sis­es Ade­line Lécot.

What is the role of each part­ner? “The Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance and UTC-Com­pieg­ne are involved in train­ing and research. SIAAP express­es its needs, which we trans­late into research and devel­op­ment or inno­va­tion pro­grammes that ulti­mate­ly lead to solu­tions that feed back into our teach­ing. SIAAP is respon­si­ble for the oper­a­tional, trans­fer­abil­i­ty and indus­tri­al deploy­ment aspects of the research results. It also funds stu­dent intern­ships and the­ses, some of which are co-super­vised”, con­cludes Thier­ry Ribeiro.

Each year, sev­er­al hun­dred stu­dents from UTC, Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty and a wider net­work of train­ing pro­grammes (BTS, Bach­e­lor’s and Mas­ter’s degrees) will ben­e­fit from this new Chair.

MSD