Researcher, research director at INRAe and then professor at the University of Montpellier, Christian Jay-Allemand has the career of an accomplished scientist. Yet when he talks about his career as a biologist, he doesn't paint a picture of the researcher in his laboratory, but rather that of a complex organizational chart that crosses disciplines and teams, students and industry, fundamental research and engineering... This is the model he has experimented with with the master's degree courses in engineering(CMI). These selective courses, launched in 2012 under the impetus of Gilles Halbout, former director of the Faculty of Science, offer project-based teaching to small classes of around twenty students. " At the University of Montpellier, we have set up eight courses in biology, biotechnology, opto-electronics, chemistry, mechanics, computer science and more. Eight CMIs, but only one teaching team to promote this model and supervise passionate students ", says Christian Jay-Allemand, who has nothing but praise for these courses. As Director of the CMI BBB (Biotechnologies-Bioressources-Biotraçabilité), he and his colleagues have worked together to build a coherent 5-year curriculum comprising over 70 teaching units.

Prix Carnot with "a very fine achievement".

" The pedagogy specific to CMIs puts students in the position of project leaders, solving environmental, health, food and other problems. These problems are sometimes proposed directly by local companies, which are thus involved in the training program ", stresses the director, who recognizes that the CMI label, awarded by the national FIGURE network, opens many doors for young recruits, which sometimes makes it difficult to keep them after the bachelor's degree. From this adventure, Christian Jay-Allemand retains in particular " one great success story ": the creation of the Antofénol company by Fanny Rolet. " This former student had come to us with a project to extract natural fungicides from vine shoots. A project that combines microbiology and chemistry to confirm the fungicidal potential of vines and identify the processes for extracting and concentrating the active substances, as well as mechanics and engineering to invent the machine capable of extracting these fungicides. All the ingredients are there to put interdisciplinarity and public-private partnerships to the test.

The UMR IATE (Ingénierie des agropolymères et technologies émergentes) is working on the biology and chemistry aspects in conjunction with Luc Bidel fromINRAe, and with Bernard Orsal's team from the Institut d'électronique et des systèmes(IES), who are working on the manufacture of an eco-extraction prototype based on the use of microwaves and ultrasound. " This project has functioned as a kind of Lab-Com, where teacher-researchers, researchers and engineers have formed a close-knit team combining fundamental and applied approaches, offering a rich training environment for our students", says Christian Jay-Allemand with satisfaction. In addition to winning the Carnot prize in 2022, the project is also an industrial success: Antofenol has set up a 20-strong plant in Plestan, Brittany, while maintaining a private research team at the heart of the laboratory, made up of former masters and doctoral students.

Creating links between the academic world and local companies is a very promising path for this man who has already worked with major industrial groups. "For example, I worked with the international Solvay Group. The collaboration turned out to be very compartmentalized and put our PhD student in a difficult position. This experience made me think a lot about our relationship with companies. The strategies of these major groups have their own logic which doesn't intersect with that of research. What's more, they don't offer any job prospects for our students", says the professor.

Promising molecular fingerprints

This year, as the latest CMI BBB class graduates, Christian Jay-Allemand is defending " the strength of our university cluster, which is nourished by these training-research pairings and is gradually changing our thinking and operating model. Even if I recognize that it is not shared by all my university colleagues. This methodology has nevertheless been retained in the new bachelor's and master's degree courses, such as the master's in wood science. This is an interdisciplinary master's program in terms of student recruitment - students come from biology, chemistry, mechanics and architecture - and teaching, with 45 teachers and around a hundred companies involved. " This master's program retains its project-based approach, with links to local companies. Take, for example the Neofor company in Mende, for example, asked the students to work on recycling its sawmill wastewater. An ad hoc study has been launched, focusing on the recovery of tannins from wood ", he explains.

Christian Jay-Allemand's research has remained unchanged since his doctorate at the University of Montpellier in 1985. The researcher has never ceased to understand, on a cellular scale, biological mechanisms based on interactions between phenolic molecules and proteins, interactions observed, in particular, through the study of fluorescence. The variation in light emission from proteins, for example, enables us to better understand their inhibitory actions. In recent years, this research has continued into the interactions between polyphenols and enzymatic proteins, with a view to identifying new cellular functions.

Even though he's beginning to consider the end of his career, Christian Jay-Allemand still has a twinkle in his eye when he talks about what's next. In his sights, the development of agro-forestry projects coupled with biotechnologies in conjunction with the communes of the Hérault region, and the desire to see the emergence of a start-up that would add value to the results of the Esbac (Eco-extraction sélective de biomolécules actives) project launched in 2018 with the Antofénol company. Managed by the University of Montpellier, this project has developed molecular imprints designed to fix molecules and then concentrate or, on the contrary, eliminate them. " A very promising tool that can find many applications to enrich or detoxify an environment", projects the enterprising professor.