After completing a PhD funded by Saint-Gobain Recherche, Gilles was taken on as a research engineer in melting processes. A look back at his career path...
"I discovered Saint-Gobain Recherche through one of my university lecturers," Gilles explains.

At the end of his PhD on the float process for making glass, carried out at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in collaboration with Saint-Gobain Recherche, he applied for a job as a research engineer in the field of glass making.

"Having completed my PhD in connection with Saint-Gobain Recherche, gave me the opportunity to discover many of the centre's activities and helped guide my future project." Taken on in October 2010, he is now a research engineer, part of a team of 15 people.

"I work on pilot furnaces that work 24 hours a day, on which we test new products and develop new glass melting processes. To do so, we have to design furnaces and then get them to work and are given wide autonomy, with a large amount left to innovation." Every morning he collects and analyses the results of the trials carried out during the night and adjusts the trials scheduled for the next day according to these data.

"This is experimental research work that is very applied. I am constantly in contact, not only with the people of my team but also with other researchers (chemists, physicists, modellers etc.) and the production plants. The team meets every day to analyse the current studies and how each of them is progressing. It is a very rewarding job both in human and scientific terms."