The 20th
anniversary
edition
March 14 & 15, 2025
at UNESCO • Paris

You initially aimed for a career in research and biochemistry: what led you to teaching, and later to leading an engineering school, SupBiotech?

Vanessa Proux: During my doctoral studies, I had several opportunities to teach and supervise interns, and I greatly enjoyed these experiences. Transmitting knowledge, guiding, and supporting others were fulfilling and enriching to me. As a result, during my postdoctoral experience, I began seeking positions both in research and teaching, which led me to cross paths with Ionis Education group (a private higher education group), which had the ambition of opening a new school dedicated to Life Engineering. They were looking for a pedagogical director to launch the school. After the interviews, I quickly realized that this was a wonderful entrepreneurial project tied to training and Biotechnology, two areas of great interest to me. I found it to be a stimulating challenge with great versatility—ideal for the hyperactive person I am. I quickly realized, once I took up the position, that I had found my professional path, a path that has been confirmed 20 years later.

SupBiotech became a société à mission (mission-driven company) in 2021. What impact has this status change had on the functioning of the school, and how has it benefited your programs and students?

After acquiring mission-driven status in September 2021, SupBiotech formalized a strategy regarding social and environmental responsibility. This strategy is deployed through its missions and organization and also integrates its specific field of training: Biotechnology. Bioeconomy and bioengineering are thus anchored in Sustainable Development and ecological transition. Today, the viability of our societies and their development modes are facing the physical and biological limits of the planet. The challenges are numerous and urgent to solve: water, energy, pollution control, climate change, North-South imbalances, biodiversity preservation, human health, and so on. Biotechnology practices provide responses to these challenges and allow the sector to address various societal issues. SupBiotech has set itself the goal of designing programs that enable future biotechnology engineers and assistant engineers to integrate the economic, social, and environmental consequences of their decisions into the real-world problems they will face.

Biotechnology is playing an increasingly important role in our society. As an engineering school in this field, how do you train your students to be aware of the impact their work has on society?

As a mission-driven company with the resulting CSR commitments, SupBiotech pays special attention to integrating societal issues into its training programs (Engineering and Bachelor's). The training is even part of SupBiotech's first statutory objective: "Design and deploy training programs that take into account the societal, ethical, and environmental issues arising from the physical and biological limits of the planet." The school has a department dedicated to Human, Economic, and Social Sciences (SHES), whose director is also the head of the Pôle des Biotechnologies en société (Biotechnology in Society Pole), one of SupBiotech’s four research laboratories. The main mission of the SHES department is to anchor training and research in this field and disseminate it through a series of educational activities across all curriculums, from the first to the last year. Among these teachings are courses such as "Biotechnological Innovation and Sustainable Development through the Lens of Social Sciences," "Sociology of Biotechnological Risks," and "The Engineer in Action: Engineering Activities and Practices," as well as "Sustainable Development and CSR."

Learning through action is at the heart of your pedagogical methods, as your programs are filled with numerous projects. How do you stimulate your students’ creativity and encourage innovation?

It is indeed very important for us to train our students in a way that prepares them to integrate the professional world and manage projects. Whether in the classical engineering cycle or in the apprenticeship cycle, our students are put in real-world situations—or we could even say in action. For example, in the engineering cycle, they participate in two major programs:

• "Fils rouges" projects
• Innovative projects, or SBIP, "SupBiotech Innovation Project"

In the "fils rouges" projects, students are faced with real-world issues from companies or research laboratories and must work in teams to develop solutions, either on marketing strategy aspects or quality control aspects. Others may work on scientific questions, devising an experimental strategy to address them, leading to the presentation of a scientific poster.

In the SBIP, students have four years to develop an innovative solution to a market need while considering eco-responsible strategies, such as drawing inspiration from nature. This is where bioinspiration or biomimicry comes into play in projects. Living organisms use strategies that allow us to rethink our development models.

The program is structured in three major steps:

• The ideation phase, which initiates teamwork and stimulates creativity
• The concept-building phase, which involves in-depth research into the market, regulations, science, patents, etc.
• The proof-of-concept phase, involving experimental work in dedicated laboratories and, in parallel, seeking partners, experts, and collaboration implementation.

Here are two examples of ongoing SBIP projects:

• "Rhizostréa," aimed at developing a biostimulant that uses minerals from shells to enrich the soil, along with mycorrhizal fungi that form a symbiosis with plant roots. Rhizostréa aims to accelerate nutrient absorption and enhance the resilience of young plants.
• "PhagoSkin," which is developing an alternative solution to traditional acne treatments, specifically targeting the responsible bacteria while preserving the skin flora and minimizing side effects. PhagoSkin aims to offer a bio-inspired solution enriched with naturally synthesized compounds for a more skin-friendly approach.

You will be speaking at the University of the Earth next March, during a session dedicated to nature-based solutions. How do you teach, develop, and nurture these solutions?

In general, all teaching at SupBiotech around biotechnology helps understand living organisms and integrates them into various application fields such as health, cosmetics, environment, and agri-food industries.

For instance, from the first year, students develop a holistic approach to understand the interactions between a need and its environment, thus addressing the concept of biodiversity and its fragility. This is the goal of the "Biodiversity" course. At the end of this course, they will present in teams an example of a product or service inspired by nature, dissecting the mechanisms, metabolisms, and strategies involved.

Smaller workshops are also offered to work more concretely on the various stages of constructing a bio-inspired project.

In parallel with the teachings, experts also intervene through conferences or coaching sessions for student teams, especially during the immersion weeks of SBIP projects, to further develop this approach. As shown by the examples of projects previously mentioned, I could add one more example: "ToucanTech," which aims to create a bio-inspired material based on the structure of a toucan’s beak, which is high-performing and has a reduced carbon footprint, offering a sustainable alternative to carbon fiber in the sports industry.