Erwan Jacquin, class of 1998, receives the Henri Kummerman 2020 Award

The Henri Kummerman Award is conferred on an individual, team or company of any nationality who has distinguished themself(ves) by their work or success in improving the methods of construction or operation of commercial ships of any kind, especially when the innovations thus achieved allow for greater productivity and increased safety.

Erwan Jacquin is Director of Research and Innovation for the shipping group CMA-CGM. His department's remit covers all aspects of ships, ports, containers and logistics.

After graduating from Centrale Nantes, he began his career at Coflexip Offshore Service (Technip Group) laying offshore pipelines. In 2001, he joined DGA/Hydrodynamics (Val de Reuil hull test tank) as a design engineer. In 2006, he was appointed head of the Resistance and Propulsion Department. At the same time, Erwan Jacquin began a PhD, which he defended in 2007 at Centrale Nantes, on improving the accuracy and functionality of a free surface CFD solver, with validation based on self-propulsion and manoeuvrability tests, and an application to the automatic optimisation of hull shapes.

Erwan Jacquin then returned to Nantes where, with Centrale Nantes, he created the company HydrOcean, which he went on to manage. HydrOcean quickly became a leading company in France in the field of computational fluid dynamics for marine industries (naval, offshore, marine renewable energies and yachting), offering high-level consulting services.

Then in 2015, in partnership with Centrale Nantes, INSEAN (Italy) and the CNRS, he created NextFlow Software, a research company specialising in the development of innovative software for numerical simulation in fluid mechanics and hydrodynamics.

Erwan Jacquin will join the CMA-CGM group in January 2020.