On July 6, three IFP School students, military personnel seconded to the Service de l’Énergie Opérationnelle (SEO), received the stripes of principal engineer (commander), bringing their 11-month training at the School to a close. The ceremony was presided over by 2ᵉ class general engineer Patrice Gobin (IFP School graduate, 1997), commander of operational energy logistics, and 1st class chief engineer Olivier Naegellen Roy (IFP School graduate, 2005), commander of the joint oil base. They distinguished senior engineers Grégoire Alziari de Malaussene, Quentin Commine (Energy and Products program, "PRO") and Zélia Goux (Energy and Markets program, "ENM"), in the presence of Thierry Lacome, Supervisor of the "PRO" program and Pascal Longuemare, Director of the Powertrains and Sustainable Mobility Center.
"Every year, IFP School welcomes young SEO engineers and we are proud to contribute to their training in the excellence required by SEO activities. The "PRO" and "ENM" programs enable them to tackle energy and environmental management, the formulation of energy and non-energy products, energy transport and storage, decarbonized energy production, marketing, finance, economics and life-cycle analysis. We offer our warmest congratulations to Grégoire Alziari de Malaussene, Quentin Commine and Zélia Goux, for their commitment to the School and their promotion to the rank of principal engineer," says Thierry Lacome.
In an article published on the SEO website this summer, Quentin Commine reflects on the benefits of his year at IFP School: "After a period of intense command in the army and a rich first part of my career in aeronautical maintenance, my year at IFP School was a time for rethinking, during which I acquired diverse, actionable skills and know-how essential to my future jobs. IFP School is an initiatory experience for all "direct" military fuel engineers, and our shared history with the school goes back a very long way: indeed, traces of collaboration between our department and the ENSP, then ENSPM (IFP School's former name), can be found as far back as 1947. In the case of my training in the Energy and Products program, I had a particularly rewarding year thanks to the commitment of the faculty, led by our center director and program supervisor (as well as his deputy and assistant). In addition to putting people at the center of everything and being deeply involved in our educational project, I was also confronted with a team that was perfectly aware of the specificities inherent in our military status. The cooperation between IFP School and our military supervisors, to our benefit, is also a powerful marker of this mutual knowledge. Finally, this year has been an opportunity to evolve with young graduates, among whom I've found some very interesting people.”
We wish Grégoire, Quentin and Zélia much success in their new command roles. We would like to take this opportunity to point out that 48 military fuel engineers are currently working for the SEO and are IFP School graduates.