The 2025 BRGM Awards.
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The BRGM Awards: an incentive that promotes and acknowledges excellence among BRGM Group employees
The BRGM awards are an incentive aimed at promoting and acknowledging excellence. Since 2017, this competition has spotlighted the outstanding results achieved by BRGM group employees.
Eight individuals or teams won prizes in six categories for their achievements in 2025:
- the Amicale BRGM (Friends of BRGM) Prize for scientific mediation,
- the Thesis Prize (with two prize winners),
- the Innovation and Research Partnership Prize,
- the Scientific Publication Prize;
- the Scientific Expertise Prize,
- the Support-Action Prize.
Awarding of the 2025 Amicale BRGM Prize for scientific mediation
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The Amicale BRGM Prize for scientific mediation
The aim of this award is to promote the scientific outreach and mediation activities of BRGM Group employees to make research results accessible to the general public.
Prize awarded to Louise Caruel (BRGM Grand Est) for the creation of a technical, scientific and educational database for teachers in the Reims education authority.
The aim of the project is to raise awareness of natural hazards and our subsurface heritage among the younger generation, while enhancing teachers' ability to address these issues in the classroom, using local, scientifically-based resources. The scientific database created concerns 8 sites (2 per département in the four départements of the former Champagne-Ardenne region). Topics covered include geology, natural hazards, hydrogeology and mineral resources.
Awarding of the Amicale BRGM 2025 special prize for scientific mediation.
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Special Jury Prize awarded to the team responsible for the podcast Les aventures du professeur Caillou (The adventures of Professor Caillou).
Award-winning team : Agnès Noël, Philippe Freyssinet, Pierre Vassal, Paul Notom, Nicolas Charles, Antoine Lebrault, Maxime Picault, Caroline Ricordel, Gaëtan Lefebvre, Anthony Pochon, Anne-Sophie Serrand, Olivier Serrano
With Les aventures du professeur Caillou , podcasts aimed at 7-11 year-olds, produced in partnership with France Inter and Studio Radio France, children set off to discover minerals, following in the footsteps of Professor Pierrette Caillou, an enthusiastic geologist, and her colleague Abel, both researchers at BRGM.
Two series have been produced and broadcast, and listened to more than a million times.
Awarding of the BRGM 2025 thesis prize.
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The Thesis Prize
This prize is awarded for an outstanding PhD thesis which has increased geoscientific knowledge. In 2025, two people were honoured for their theses.
Prize awarded to Naomie Nischke for her thesis entitled Réhabilitation de mines d'or en Guyane : stabilisation et devenir du mercure et métalloïdes [Post-mining rehabilitation of gold mines in French Guiana: stabilisation and fate of mercury and metalloids].
The aim of this CIFRE thesis, carried out in collaboration with GAIA SAS and co-supervised by ISTERRE in Grenoble, IPREM in Pau and BRGM in Orléans, was to gain a better understanding of mercury flows on gold-mining sites during their post-mining rehabilitation, and to identify areas for improvement. This work is characterised by a multidisciplinary approach, combining field and laboratory work, on several scales.
The jury praised Naomie Nischke's great maturity and critical distance from her work, demonstrating rigorous reflection and an ability to place her research in a wider context. The exceptional quality of her manuscript and oral presentation was also highlighted.
Awarding of the BRGM 2025 special thesis prize.
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Special Jury Prize awarded to Daniel Hubé for his thesis entitled (1914-1918). Première Guerre mondiale sur le front occidental. L'héritage environnemental d’une guerre et d’une sortie de guerre industrielles [(1914-1918). The First World War on the Western front. The environmental legacy of an industrial war and post-war period].
Combining chemistry, geochemistry, environmental sciences and history, this thesis could well be a masterpiece of inter-disciplinary scientific research. It demonstrates that the environmental ravages that accompany modern warfare have a lasting impact on soil and water. The impact of the industrial war and its aftermath persist on time scales far beyond those of the events that generated it.
The thesis involved a considerable amount of work for analysing archive documents, cross-referencing sources, field research, making appropriate use of complementary chemical techniques (such as isotope geochemistry), analysing the information gathered and putting the results into perspective. Finally, in addition to the quality of the manuscript, the oral presentation was described by the thesis jury as 'a pure pedagogical and didactic gem'.
Awarding of the BRGM 2025 prize for innovation and collaborative research.
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The Innovation and Research Partnerships prize
This prize is awarded for an innovative approach or successful collaboration with external partners.
Prize awarded to Stéphanie Betelu and Alain Séron for the CaliCO2 project: Process for capturing and releasing CO₂ using layered double hydroxides, controlled by electrolysis.
Founded in March 2025, CaliCO2 is a company set up as a partnership between a start-up studio, 4elements, BRGM researchers Stéphanie Betelu and Alain Séron, and BRGM Invest, the investment arm of BRGM. Its purpose is to develop and market an innovative process for capturing and releasing the CO2. A winner of i-Lab 2025, the innovation competition organised by BpiFrance, CaliCO2 aims to set the standard in carbon capture for industrial players that emit large quantities of CO2 in their flue gases (cement manufacturers, steel producers, waste incineration companies, etc.). The technology deployed by CaliCO2 is the result of over 20 years of studies by BRGM researchers, who have filed six patents with an exclusive licence of operation.
Presentation of the BRGM 2025 prize for scientific publication.
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The Scientific Publication Prize
This prize is designed to highlight a publication of major importance to the scientific community.
Prize awarded to Pierre Wawrzyniak as lead author of the article "Magnetotelluric evidence for a melt-rich magmatic reservoir beneath Mayotte" published in the journal Nature
What form do large volumes of magma take beneath the Earth's surface? A research team comprising scientists from BRGM, CNRS, the University of Orléans and the University of Western Brittany has come up with an unprecedented answer: beneath the island of Mayotte lies a zone with a volume of over 200 km³, 23 kilometres deep, almost half of which contains liquid magma. It could be linked to the birth of the large undersea volcano Fani Maoré, which formed in 2018. This result has been published in the journal Nature.
Awarding of the BRGM 2025 Prize for Scientific Expertise.
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The Scientific Expertise Prize
This prize is awarded to one or more employees involved in an outstanding scientific project or activity carried out for a public body in France or abroad.
Prize awarded to teams from the Réunion and Mayotte regional divisions for their involvement in cyclone crisis-management
In late 2024 and early 2025, BRGM worked with the local authorities in Réunion and Mayotte to support cyclone crisis-management following cyclones Chido and Garance. BRGM contributed in several ways by producing maps for natural hazards, in particular earth movements and coastal flooding, carrying out emergency geological risk assessments on infrastructure and buildings, and taking part in public meetings to support the population.
Awarding of the BRGM 2025 prize for support-action.
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The Support-Action Prize
This prize honours efforts to improve BRGM's internal operations.
Prize awarded to the team in charge of managing and carrying out the office relocations to support BRGM's reorganisation
Award-winning team: Sandrine Lemal, Laurence Amalric, Loïc Magnaud, Damien Torcheux, Jérôme Guillermain and Fanny Ravenaud
The revision of its scientific strategy led BRGM to adapt its internal organisation in 2025. With this reorganisation, BRGM embarked on an internal relocation operation aimed at bringing together the teams of the new departments and enabling them to form a cohesive whole, as well as optimising the organisation of workspaces.
