Position: EU Project Manager and Business Developer, R2M Solution
Education: Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering and Applied Geophysics 

My best interview - Dr. Cécile Barrère 

NTNU is the most international place I have ever experienced. All departments are strongly committed and caring for the future of their students. I really appreciated the proximity between the university and the professional world.

Good morning Cécile, nice to relaunch the NTNU Alumni Spain portrait with you in 2021, could you please introduce yourself and tell us about your studies?

I was born in the South-East of France. I grew up in a small village, I am not so old, but I am from this generation which played outside without too much parental control. This freedom gave me the opportunity to explore my taste for experimentation: I was building dams in streams, comparing leaves and beetles, observing growing tadpole in jars. I think that many kids are born scientists! In my teen years my family’s life got very complicated, and I had to move to Paris’ suburbs. I grew up fast and I identified school and education as a mean to build a good future for myself. This was an idea which never left me throughout my entire life.

When I started university, choosing Earth Sciences was logical to me. I had no fixed plan, I was very optimistic, I stayed very focus while enjoying my student life and freedom of young adult.

I started studying in Aix-en-Provence. After 2 years of general topics, I decided to target a more professionalizing syllabus. With very little money I moved back to Paris to attend geotechnical classes. As I was studying geotechnics, I discovered geophysics and felt totally in love with this powerful branch of geoscience, mixing physics and natural sciences, creating spectacular images of what is not possible to see with the naked eye. Geophysics career offers the possibility to travel overseas, an idea I loved even though I had never entered a plane at that time. 

After graduating, I felt that the tasks I got offered at work were very narrow. I wanted more challenge and to add strings to my bow. I was pushed to look for a PhD thesis abroad because my master’s degree was tagged as “engineer” instead of “research”. In France, recruitment processes were more about ticking key words than checking student motivation and dreams. In the end, this has been the chance of a lifetime! I spent some time looking for the PERFECT thesis, and one day I found an add on Earthworks.com. Trondheim, where is it on Earth? NTNU and NGU, who are they? The project was about integrating numerous geophysical and geological data sets, it had industrial collaborations, 3D modeling to look for mountains underwater close to the North pole, all looked absolutely PERFECT to me! My dossier was selected, I received phone calls I managed to answer with my broken English of 2005, and I bought a one-way ticket to this country and city I knew only from google pictures. Adventure was calling!

How would you describe the impact of your 3 years’ experience at NTNU and NGU?

NTNU is the most international place I have ever experienced. All departments are strongly committed and caring for the future of their students. I really appreciated the proximity between the university and the professional world. 

Being a NTNU PhD candidate at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU) during 3 years was a wonderful professional and personal experience. I discovered the sense of teamwork, solidarity, excellence, horizontal management and the fact that “there is always room for improvement”, as my boss at that time used to say (Hei Odleiv!). NTNU and NGU made my dreamed PhD time come true! In 2007, I got the huge chance to join a trip to Svalbard on a scientific Norwegian & Russian cruise. I have not enough words to express the beauty of this environment, landscapes were so spectacular, seeing polar bears in their natural environment changed my perception of the world forever. Believe me, NTNU geological studies are the best studies to embrace! 

What is your current position and role?

Since November 2020 I am a European project manager and business developer at R2M Solution. R2M means Research to Market, which tells a lot about the company’s mission. This consulting company has about 70 employees with impressive international education and professional experiences in various engineering specialties. This unique blend of skills allows tackling many aspects of the energy transition. The company is headquartered in Italy, and it has branches in France, Spain and the UK. 

My role is halfway between research and industry, a place I tested during my PhD time at NTNU and that suits me the most, as I realize today. I have 3 main activities: supporting the exploitation of EU research project results, leading the commercial deployment in France of an innovative AI solution for buildings and providing consulting services to develop consortia and project proposals which will be submitted to European calls for projects such as Horizon Europe. My role at R2M is about supporting the innovation effort of the scientific community to help the society progressing in its energy transition. 

You worked in the upstream oil & gas industry for many years, what has been your experience in this sector who went through several crises during the past decade?

The upstream oil & gas industry is a very stimulating environment because the professionals need to stay at the leading edge of several scientific subjects in order to be competitive and successful. 

As you mentioned, the oil and gas sector has been through several crises. First, the subprime crisis froze the hires of many of my colleagues right after 2008, and then the barrel crisis in 2014 ‘limited’ if not ‘rang the end of’ oil and gas exploration in a lot of oil and gas companies. In my view, at the end, the massive impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the oil and gas industry has finished to convince the skeptics that the oil and gas exploration was something from the past. After more than one year of crisis and lock-down across the world, most oil and gas companies align to carbon neutral strategies. I loved working is this demanding sector but in 2020 I really felt I needed to take an active role in a sector carrying more optimism. 

How did you make possible your professional transition?

Most professional transitions are long processes. In my case the process was probably not 100% conscious. First, when the scientific content of the exploration projects became less exciting, I moved to project economy to learn something new and useful in many contexts.

Then, at a certain point, I realized that my daily work was just not aligned anymore with my centers of interest, which I could described as techno oriented. I struggled to find satisfaction at work, and I found a lot of joy in many side activities I did outside my job. Chairing the NTNU Alumni Spain Group and co-organizing the event “Innovations for a Sustainable Development” in November 2019 was one of these activities. When I realized that the choice to plan a next step was mine, I felt immediately better.

It was time to make a strong choice again. I was sure that the next position would need to be in an international team and much closer to research topics to feed my curiosity. I ended up looking for opportunities in research valorization, one foot in research, one in the industry. I was nicely surprised by the success of my CV in this environment. Now, after 10 months in my new role, I feel aligned at R2M, “Research 2 Market”, my perfect match!

What would you recommend to scientific professionals who want to pivot their career?

To pivot without exhausting yourself, I would recommend building on top of the existing, looking transversally at you CV, zooming out to detect your strengths without sticking your nose onto your technical skills. Detect what type of mission makes you feel excited. Remember that a transition is not about going out of your “comfort zone” because you were not comfortable in it. This zone may be where you landed because of your previous choices and parameters that you cannot control (e.g., worldwide crisis, company strategies management decisions). The good news is that many of us have the possibility to make new choices to feel again the flow at work. That is the magic of education and skills: they open doors. I would recommend working hard, with passion, never wasting an opportunity to learn (i.e., technical skills, methodologies, languages…) and keeping the mindset of the explorer!

My networks:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecile-barrere-phd-6a615711b/
https://www.instagram.com/antifragile_blog/