Nicolas Zanese, CTO of Seawards, leads a team of eight people from the network of incubators for innovative companies in Pertuis. His challenge: to develop cryo-separation technology while ensuring a high quality of work life for a team with diverse skill sets.
The Seawards team, which consists of around ten people, including Ryma and Florent who arrived in March, as well as Keti, who is on an internship working on the subject of water quality, is largely focused on R&D and the development of cryo-separation technology.
Engineers, PhDs, and other professionals with versatile skills contribute in fields such as thermal, energy, and mechanical engineering, as well as environmental science and microbiology. Each of them chose to join Seawards, driven by environmental concerns and a strong desire to contribute to a cause of public interest: water. This breakthrough technology, compared to other seawater desalination solutions, is also a major motivation. Every new team member brings about a shift in organization. “Managing a team of ten is different from managing a team of three, but our current scale allows us to work efficiently while understanding and respecting each person’s needs and challenges. This is one of the advantages of startup life—constantly reinventing management practices to ensure quality of life and collective well-being at work. Today, our team is fully capable of focusing on the challenges of developing an innovative technology and finding solutions tailored to each R&D issue.”
With six years of experience in process modeling, newcomer Ryma Laifa is working at Seawards on several topics: optimizing the energy efficiency of the process, pre- and post-water treatment phases, and physico-chemical analysis alongside Camille Mangin, the in-house expert and researcher in environmental microbiology and water technology. For this engineer from the Polytechnic School of Algiers, who also holds a Master’s degree from Paris-Saclay University and a PhD from INSA Toulouse, joining a dynamic startup creates a bridge between laboratory research and industrial processes.
For Florent Jourdon, a graduate of the Arts et Métiers engineering school in Aix-en-Provence specializing in electrical engineering, who earned his engineering degree in electrical engineering and automation, the goal is to make the machine efficient and autonomous, improve processes, and simplify operations as much as possible from a control panel or computer. His role is to automate the prototype and prepare it for industrialization, ensuring the machine becomes both automated and efficient, with interventions at various stages—first in the lab, then on the prototype, and within a year, on the demonstration model. “In the long run, our agile and committed team will leverage its versatility to tackle multiple challenges. Currently based in the innovative incubator network in Pertuis, we will soon move to Marseille to install the prototype at a site with direct access to the sea. The next step will be setting up a demonstrator to prove our technology… and further developing the partnership strategy that Seawards has initiated worldwide. We are aware of the challenges ahead, and we are ready to take them on!”
