The most critical operational role of anyone in charge of R&D in an innovation-driven company is to make decisions about what to focus on … and what to stop doing to free up resources.

This presentation will describe tools and best practices designed to help making these tough choices required to build a portfolio of innovation projects which is well aligned with an organization’s strategic goals. These goals include financial ones but not only; Critical aspects like sustainability must be considered at the very beginning of projects to ensure the development of “sustainable by design” solutions.

We will discuss practical methodologies used to develop and assess value propositions of potential projects even before they are initiated.

Nicolas Cudré-Mauroux joined SICPA SA in January 2024 as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in charge of Research and Innovation activities for the group.

Nicolas spent the first part of his career with DuPont de Nemours where, from 1988 to 2015, he had multiple roles in R&D, marketing, business development and M&A in several divisions dedicated to high performance materials and food ingredients. These roles were based in Switzerland, United States, Canada and Denmark.

In 2015, Nicolas joined Solvay, a Belgian company active in chemistry, polymers and composite materials, as CTO.

He is a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, of the Board of Directors of CNRS (France) and of the Board of Governors of the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago (USA). In 2019, he received the “EPFL Alumni Award” and the “European CTO of the year – Large companies” prize from the EIRMA association.

Nicolas is Swiss and was born in Luxembourg. He has a MS and a PhD in Materials Science from the Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

5:15 pm
Doors open

5:30 pm
Welcome address
Jan Hesthaven, Vice President for Academic Affairs

5:40 pm 
Campus Lecture
Nicolas Cudré-Mauroux, Chief Technology Officer at SICPA

6:30 pm
Q&A
Moderated by Véronique Michaud, Associate Professor, Laboratory for Processing of Advanced Composites

6:45 pm
Networking aperitif