Servant of the State To the end of the nail

Servant of the State To the end of the nail. Manager at McKinsey matrix Just as much. Scientist and engineer at a time Without a shadow of a doubt. But first and foremost all a professor who does not hesitate to get out pencil and Notepad to explain to the layman, design support, the intricacies of the fracture mechanics, his specialty first as a researcher. "I was a teacher in the soul." "To the point that sometimes this annoys my interlocutors," slip the pattern of the CNES (Centre national d'Etudes spatiales) into a smile. There are however long that Yannick of Roelants abandoned rooms amphi X, the Mines de Paris or the Ensta for an industrial career has led him to the highest Office. After having worked twenty years in nuclear power, particularly in the Atomic Energy Commission, he has led during the second half of the 1990s, and then at EDF, which he was the number two of the time to François Roussely, former Chief Engineer mines exchanged atoms against the stars, plants against the satellites - these "Angels guardians of humanity."as he puts it nicely. It was in February 2003. Seven years later, he comes to sixty-one years, to be reappointed for a third term at the head of the CNES. And is endless when it comes to extol the accomplishments of engineers House - 5 and soon 6 generations of rocket Ariane satellite Spot, Helios, Meteosat or Jason - or to list the countless applications of these satellites in our every day life.

A thirst for understanding

Young man, the future grand committed State dreamed of doing research in... medicine! "The gift that I prisais the most, it was a microscope", he recalled. He was however persuaded to sub - SPE and presents itself to the sport at Polytechnique, persuaded to not be received. X, that he finally with two years in advance and which he vice-major, diverting the medical sector but not its vocation of scientist. The work that it will perform at the school solid mechanics laboratory will enable cover the entire spectrum of research, the most fundamental physics to the more industrial applications since its advances will lead very directly to the development of design rules and mechanical construction of nuclear power plants including the France 1970s will then decide to adopt.

TECHNICATOME, the subsidiary of CEA specialised in nuclear propulsion of submarines which he joined in the early 1980's, see it quickly climb to the top until it is called by the parent to create a Directorate of advanced technologies in 1990. A change of direction that met the need of rubbing itself in the industry, as, a few years earlier, he had learned to solder to understand these "cracks" so long studied in mathematical terms. It is in this "big SME" a thousand employees that Yannick of Roelants is immersed in management textbooks, with the same intellectual greed had pushed to devour all Freud and any Jung on the advice of his wife psy. This thirst for understanding the springs of human and nature is at home almost unhealthy. Even at the controls of his airplane, while he sings, he cannot help to think of the physical phenomena that enable the aircraft to fly.