PhD Innovation week: testing your capacity to innovate
In early December 2024, doctoral student Logan Chevret took part in the PhD Innovation week. A sort of life-size exercise, he gained a wealth of technical advice and practical experience, with the ultimate aim of developing his own company.
If he doubted it, he's now more convinced: after his studies, Logan Chevret would like to try his hand at entrepreneurship. "I've always been attracted by the applicative side of chemistry research", confides the PhD student, who took part in the very first edition of PhD Innovation week, from December 2 to 5, 2024, organized by the University of Montpellier, leader of the Pôle universitaire d'innovation, the collège doctoral and the Société d'accélération du transfert de technologies (SATT AxLR) de Montpellier. With a group of student volunteers, he practiced sounding out the potential of innovative research, and testing its possible transfer to the market. Inspired by the "Doctoriales" program, this life-size exercise is designed to raise awareness of business creation among students at the end of their studies.
Currently enrolled in a Cifre thesis, between the academic and industrial worlds, the young man is spending his final year of study with one foot at theCharles Gerhardt Institute in Montpellier (ICGM), and the other at the Saint-Gobain Paris research center. On a daily basis, he strives to find solutions to "reduce the company's carbon footprint". This is a major industrial need, to which he is trying to respond in two ways: by successfully recycling resins already on the market, and by replacing them in the long term with new, low-carbon resins that are easy to recycle.
A real eye-opener
The PhD student is due to finalize his thesis, started three years ago, by this autumn. After that, he plans to set up his own company, "I've always enjoyed working on concrete projects. You have an idea, and gradually you test its industrial effects, potentially right up to the factory floor. We have the opportunity to support the project at every stage, from conception to completion", Logan Chevret sums up.
For profiles like hers, PhD Innovation week was a real eye-opener. That week, some thirty PhD students from a wide variety of backgrounds gathered on the Boutonnet campus of the University of Montpellier "with a common desire to discover the world of business", explains Logan. Numerous experts were on hand to help them and present the key steps. "For example, we learned how to pitch a product, or how to initiate a fund-raising campaign...
Test the viability of a project from A to Z
Divided into several groups, the students then put themselves in the shoes of a researcher in the process of creating his own start-up from a patent. "We were given an active, but as yet unexploited, patent that SATT AxLR had not valorized. These were patents that had not yet led to the creation of a start-up or a product. The aim was to find a way of exploiting and adding value to these assets", continues Logan Chevret, who worked more specifically on the Tumor cell asset.
Registered 17 years ago, this patent aims to detect cancerous tumors at an early stage using a blood test. "We chose this patent because we were interested in its potential," adds the doctoral student, who then took part in a presentation at the end of the week. "The idea was to detail all the stages of our project, from implementation to business creation. We asked ourselves whether we should develop other patents in parallel. But also whether it made more sense to develop an analysis laboratory to process our own samples, or whether we should work in collaboration with hospitals instead. We also looked into the possibility of social security funding. And then we tried to quantify the cost of each stage..."
Alongside Satt-AxLr, the Initium incubators, Bic Montpellier, Bic Innov'up Nîmes and Pepite-LR were also present. It was an opportunity for Logan to make a few contacts with a view to fine-tuning his future projects. "It was reassuring, it made us aware of the possible support available to us," adds the student, who would like to continue working in the environmental sector. "I feel like I'm being useful. It's a promising and necessary field...". A new scheme co-sponsored by the University of Montpellier, which promises to create even more vocations towards entrepreneurship!