A PREDESTINED RELATIONSHIP
Before to speak about ITIMS, I would like to speak about Nguyen Duc Chien who studied at Grenoble long time ago, even before ITIMS exists. Indeed, 20 years ago, I met him at Champagnier (a small village close to Grenoble, France) thanks to my father in law (Bui Sy Tin). At this period I prepared a PhD at Ecole Centrale de Lyon about the development of ISFET and we were both interested about these sensors and I remember that we discussed a lot about these sensors.
Few years later Chien invited me to participate to the 2nd International Workshop on Materials Science (October 1995) and it was for me the opportunity to discover ITIMS for the first time. Since then, I went regularly to ITIMS in the frame of different project supported by CNRS or by the French Embassy (for example FSP ESPOIR concerning the water quality in the ToLich River etc).
During these years, it was for me the opportunity to meet in Vietnam or welcome in France different students known to be excellent. The life is sometimes extraordinary because one of them was the son of my wife’s aunt (it was really a coincidence). He was preparing a PhD in the Netherlands.
Years after years, the link between ITIMS and my lab were reinforced and the relationships with my Vietnamese colleagues were always better. I would like to thank all of them for their warm welcome during these years.
These last years my research activities were more focussed on the development of biosensors and in this frame I welcomed in my laboratory TUAN ANH MAI for the preparation of his PhD. It was a sandwich PhD with a financial support coming from the French Embassy (Chien was the Vietnamese supervisor and me the French one). His PhD was about the development of biosensors for the detection of different pesticides including atrazine, diuron etc. Tuan should stay six months in France and six months in Vietnam. As I though six months in France was not enough, I managed to obtain for him three months more in France. I though it was a good idea but I forget to inform the French Embassy who were persuaded that Tuan did not want to come back to Vietnam and so you can imagine all the difficulties I had after that to explain what was the real situation! Today Tuan is always at ITIMS and I know that he realizes a very good job about the development of different kind of biosensors.
To conclude I would like to congratulate all the people who contributed to the success of ITIMS today, particularly, to my friends Nguyen Duc Chien and Tuan Anh MAI.
Lyon, November 2007
Author: Jean-Marc CHOVELON, Professor,
Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse et l’Environnement de Lyon
