Carlos Robles Rodriguez

What connects the cities of Guadalajara (Mexico), Narbonne and Toulouse?

The answer is Carlos Robles Rodriguez. It was while he was doing a Chemical Engineering MSc in Guadalajara that Carlos first heard about the Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology (LBE¹) in Narbonne through his professor, who just so happened to have done his thesis there and had maintained ties with the French laboratory. Suitably impressed, Carlos headed to Narbonne to do his internship, where he met TBI staff such as fellow Mexican Cesar Arturo Aceves Lara, who would later jointly supervise Carlos’s thesis at TBI with Carole Molina Jouve. It’s a small world, as they say.

Motivated and inquisitive, Carlos accepted three postdoc positions before becoming a researcher at INRAE. A specialist in bioprocess modelling and optimization, he now devotes his energies to developing tools for the eco-design of bioprocesses, assessing the impact of innovations in three key areas:

• Economic: is the process profitable (in terms of energy at least)?
• Environmental: is the process environmentally friendly?
• Technological: is the process effective and efficient?

In studying and developing tools, Carlos gains a global vision of innovation and assesses technologies at lab scale to find a balance between these three areas and decide if the technology in question is likely to see the light of day.

Very much a people person, Carlos likes to get involved in projects and working groups and teamed up with other young researchers to co-organize the TBI’s Science Days in 2023. Away from his research activities, and when his hectic schedule allows, Carlos pursues his other great passion: music. The son of a music teacher, he plays an impressive four instruments, sings and performs with a Toulouse-based musical comedy troupe.