R&D technician

Testimonial of Katell Logeat - R&D technician - Biotechnology Department

Do you want to learn more about ARD? Meet an R&D technician with the biotechnology department

My role at ARD

Working in R&D for ARD means being at the heart of green innovation. It's like a new challenge every day, looking for the best way to develop step-by-step new bio-based molecules and products capable of replacing those made with petrochemicals. It's constantly stimulating because I am involved in diverse projects depending on the needs of our customers.

ARD has various sizes of fermenters, which allows me to conduct fermentation trials at different scales from the laboratory scale to pilot scale. To ensure that scale-up is successful, I must conduct microbiological analyses at each step and draft a summary of the tests conducted. This then allows us to optimise the processes and guarantee ARD's customers successful scale up there production to a commercial operation.

You have to be versatile and know how to use different types of equipment.

What I like about my job

In my job I must be able to adapt to different situations all the time because every project is different. When you work at different stages of fermentation, and fermenters of different sizes, you have to be versatile and know how to use different types of equipment. But technical expertise mustn't override personal relationships, and particularly teamwork, as I don't work alone in the biotechnology team. We are all constantly talking to our colleagues and the project managers. By pooling our skills and our ideas, we make faster progress on possible issues, and ultimately this accelerates the different steps.

In R&D, I also have the opportunity to interact with ARD's other teams, like plant chemistry and the environmental team. Is always very enriching to be able to talk with other experts, to not work in silos or on a specific, repetitive task, and to have an overview of the importance of our work.