Alain Liné

Alain Liné is an iconic figure at the laboratory, at once calm and respectful with a dry sense of humour and a poet’s sensibility. He joined the laboratory in 1994 as a teacher–researcher at INSA Toulouse, but was by no means destined to end up there. During his studies at INP-ENSEEIHT in Toulouse, he met Professor Lucien Masbernat, who shared his passion with him. After completing his military service – a rewarding experience where he learned about several aspects of applied mathematics – Alain embarked on a thesis with IFP, Total & Elf Aquitaine¹ under the supervision of his mentor at the Toulouse Institute of Fluid Mechanics (IMFT).

He then joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a research scientist in 1985, still with the IMFT, before becoming a university lecturer four years later at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse (INPT, now Toulouse INP). This unconventional decision allowed him to balance both the immediacy of teaching and the longer-term work of research. In 1994, he finally took up his teaching post at INSA Toulouse, where he worked on fluid mechanics and process engineering. He leveraged his expertise in gas and liquid flows (initially applied to the oil and nuclear industries) to obtain long-term funding and explore the physical problems of multiphase flows in greater detail. When Alain joined the LIPE² later that year, he formed part of a joint team working on water treatment processes and decided to change fields, overseeing two main areas: the hydrodynamics of mixtures and bubble column hydrodynamics.

For nearly a decade, he was a member of the laboratory’s management team and was involved in discussions on merging the LBB³ and LIPE laboratories into a joint research unit – the Biological Systems and Process Engineering Laboratory, or LISBP (now TBI) – covering topics ranging from microorganisms to processes. Alain is proud to have played a part in making TBI the attractive, dynamic and multidisciplinary lab it is today. He was also involved in leading the FERMaT research federation, which pools cutting-edge equipment for fluid mechanics and process engineering in the Toulouse region.

For him, being a researcher is about living one’s passion, embracing the unexpected and sharing knowledge. To get better, you have to be willing to fail. Alain loves projects and challenges: he continued his research during the 2009–2010 academic year, working part-time at Imperial College London and King’s College London. He was elected to the French CNU⁴ and joined the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES) panel of experts. He also co-authored a book with two colleagues from the Chemical Engineering Laboratory (LGC) on transport phenomena entitled Phénomènes de transfert en génie des procédés.

By the end of his career, he had supervised more than 30 PhD students, and his research on fluid mechanics and process engineering led him to sit on more than 100 thesis juries, a quarter of which at universities outside France.