After grad­u­at­ing from UTC with an engi­neer­ing degree, major­ing in process engi­neer­ing in 2008, Joëlle Huynh-Eyssauti­er extend­ed her stud­ies with a the­sis at IFPEN. She cur­rent­ly works in the Pack­ag­ing Qual­i­fi­ca­tion depart­ment at L’Oréal. Here is a por­trait of a woman open to the world.

This open vista? She demon­strat­ed it at the end of her sec­ond year of sec­ondary school in Ardèche by spend­ing a year in the Unit­ed States thanks to Vivre sans Fron­tières, an asso­ci­a­tion that pro­motes inter­cul­tur­al exchange. “I was 15 when I left my fam­i­ly to embark on this adven­ture with an Amer­i­can host fam­i­ly in Cleve­land, Ohio. I enrolled in an Amer­i­can high school and was par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed by the very prag­mat­ic way of teach­ing physics,” she says.

In her final year of sec­ondary school, while she was aim­ing to attend the CPE (chem­istry and dig­i­tal IT) engi­neer­ing school in Lyon, a friend told her about UTC. This infor­ma­tion came at just the right time, as one of her broth­ers had just moved to Com­pieg­ne. “I decid­ed to go to their Open Days and was delight­ed by the fact that you could choose your CC mod­ules, which remind­ed me of my expe­ri­ence in the Unit­ed States, the inter­na­tion­al out­look with oppor­tu­ni­ties for dou­ble degrees or intern­ships, par­tic­u­lar­ly abroad, the pro­mo­tion of entre­pre­neur­ship and, final­ly, the vital­i­ty of the stu­dent asso­ci­a­tions,’ explains Joëlle.

These were major advan­tages in her eyes. “Today, I con­tin­ue to vamp UTC to young peo­ple, high­light­ing the fact that, while it is a gen­er­al­ist tech­nol­o­gy uni­ver­si­ty, besides its dis­tinct spe­cial­i­sa­tions. This allows us to rub shoul­ders, so to speak, with very dif­fer­ent pro­files. This would not have been the case if I had cho­sen a spe­cialised school. My net­work is made up of entre­pre­neurs, includ­ing my hus­band, whom I met at UTC and oth­er engi­neers involved in a wide vari­ety of sec­tors. Dur­ing my stud­ies, I also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chair the ‘Objec­tifs Argenti­na’ asso­ci­a­tion, whose aim is to help chil­dren in Jujuy, a poor region of that coun­try where the parish priest is a for­mer UTC stu­dent. It was a human adven­ture and a fan­tas­tic first man­age­r­i­al expe­ri­ence for me,‘ she explains.

Dur­ing her years of study, she mapped out her path and was very care­ful in choos­ing her intern­ships. “Dur­ing the first year of the core cur­ricu­lum, I had my first expe­ri­ence in a large com­pa­ny, name­ly L’Oréal. My six-month intern­ship dur­ing my first year of process engi­neer­ing took place in a research lab­o­ra­to­ry at INRA, work­ing on the extrac­tion of tea aro­mas. It was an expe­ri­ence that com­bined process­es, chem­i­cal analy­ses and sen­so­ry analy­ses. Final­ly, I com­plet­ed my final year project at Coty (a cos­met­ics com­pa­ny) based in Ash­ford (Eng­land) as part of the UTC research Mas­ter’s degree, which I pur­sued along­side my engi­neer­ing degree. Ini­tial­ly reluc­tant to pur­sue a PhD, one of my teach­ers con­vinced me to join an IFPEN (renew­able ener­gies) lab­o­ra­to­ry that was offer­ing a top­ic relat­ed to the phys­i­cal chem­istry of petro­le­um. It was per­fect for round­ing out my knowl­edge of process­es,” she explains.

After com­plet­ing her the­sis, she felt the call of the open seas. She and her hus­band decid­ed to try their luck in Asia. An oppor­tu­ni­ty arose at INS Thaï in Bangkok, a sub­sidiary of INS (Inno­va­tion, Nano­ma­te­ri­als and Strat­e­gy), a French SME. They stayed there for three years. On her return to France in 2015, she joined L’Oréal. “I start­ed as the right-hand clos­est col­lab­o­ra­tor to the head of a research lab­o­ra­to­ry spe­cial­is­ing in the phys­i­cal and chem­i­cal analy­sis of raw mate­ri­als, before tak­ing over from him a year lat­er. After nine years of ded­i­ca­tion and pas­sion for data and exper­tise-ori­ent­ed top­ics, I want­ed to change careers to be clos­er to the fin­ished prod­uct and pack­ag­ing issues. In Jan­u­ary 2025, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join the oper­a­tions team in the Pack­ag­ing Qual­i­fi­ca­tion depart­ment, work­ing on packaging/formula com­pat­i­bil­i­ty stud­ies,” con­cludes Joëlle. Once again, this change of direc­tion allowed her to acquire new skills and expand her valu­able network.

BIO Notes

• 2000: at the age of 15, left for a year in the Unit­ed States
• 2008: grad­u­at­ed from UTC, major­ing in process engineering
• 2012: pre­sent­ed her PhD the­sis IFPEN
• 2012: left for three years in Bangkok, Thailand
• 2015: joined L’Oréal in Research & Innovation

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