Sylvaine Neveu, born on 6 January 1968, is a French chemist and scientific director of the Solvay group. She received an Irène-Joliot-Curie Prize in 2016.

Life and work

Born in Rennes, France, Neveu attended Châteaubriand high school before enrolling at the ParisTech School of Chemistry. She went on to earn her doctorate in

process engineering Process engineering is the understanding and application of the fundamental principles and laws of nature that allow humans to transform raw material and energy into products that are useful to society, at an industrial level. By taking advantage ...

from the École Nationale Supérieure des mines in Paris and joined the Belgian company

Solvay Solvay may refer to: Companies and organizations * Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Brussels, Belgium * Solvay Conference, founded by Ernest Solvay, deals with open questions in physics and chemistry * Solvay Indupa, an Argen ...

group in 1994. There, she is works at the Research and Innovation organization in charge of the development of products and processes for the Group’s Global Business Unit Silica. All of Neveu's work is based on understanding the "

nanoscopic The nanoscopic scale (or nanoscale) usually refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology, usually cited as 1–100 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The nanoscopic scale is (roughly speaking) a lo ...

structure and functions of an important molecule in a number of everyday objects, silica or

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

, which is none other than

silicon dioxide Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one ...

(SiO2)." She received the Irène-Joliot-Curie prize in 2016 for her innovations in the field of silica and energy-saving tires. During an interview with Sergeant, she described her tire project.

Thus, the new "green tire" requires less energy to manufacture than its rubber ancestors. The material that makes up the tire, a synthetic polymer containing 50% silica, brings 10 to 20% technical improvements: it wears out less quickly and adheres better to the road, thus contributing to better safety.

Her research projects target the reduction of the consumption of energy and water during the production of silicas, and she has "authored 17 patent families and leads the department in charge of the development and industrialization of new silica products and processes."

Awards and distinctions

* Irène-Joliot-Curie prize in the category "Research and Business Woman" in 2016.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neveu, Sylvaine Living people Scientists from Rennes 21st-century French scientists 21st-century French women scientists French women scientists French women chemists 1968 births