photographist

"Chemistry reveals the structure of matter... For my thesis, I wanted to transform materials using electricity – by working on their oxidation-reduction properties to synthesise new phases, understand new mechanisms, etc.
At the time, it was to make superconducting materials; materials which have the property of conducting electricity without losing heat.
I synthesised for the first time a molybdenum selenide, Mo9Se11. It was a very fundamental subject and truly exemplary of research work. For 20 years this was maturing in our neurons and 20 years later, by using the same compounds and the same properties, we have managed to exploit them for depollution purposes, to use them to make a treatment – a selective extraction of metal ions from an effluent to another bath, in order to purify and better these waste treatment baths.

When I worked briefly in the steel industry, I was head of a "new products" section in a research and development centre. We were researching the association of steel with other compounds: polymers to make sandwich sheets (two layers of steel and one layer of polymer) to reduce the weight of structures or to soundproof them (for example oil sumps), plaster to make partitions rigid, etc. I was the rarity in this sector, the academic woman. This research centre disillusioned me. Driven by marketing, the research wasn't advanced enough and it was pretty frustrating. So I went back to university, where my initial job was lecturer and researcher: acquiring knowledge through research and then passing on this knowledge via teaching. I am now working on the development of thermo-electric semi-conductors by electrochemistry and I am currently Vice President of my university's scientific council."

Clotilde Boulanger
University Professor, Institut Jean Lamour - Metz

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