Senior engineer of the French Corps des Mines (Ingénieur général des Mines) — scientific ecology, AI, geomatics, territories and living systems
Observe→Understand→Connect→Map→Act
🏛️ institutional🤝 associative🔭 naturalist
I am Frédéric Pallu, Ingénieur général des Mines (senior engineer of the French Corps des Mines), in charge of economic and strategic development at IMT Atlantique in Nantes. At CNET, France Télécom's research centre, and then at France Télécom R&D, I was project manager for the migration of the Pages Jaunes directory to the Internet, provided the technical oversight of the Voilà search engine and co-signed several patents. After serving as State commissioner for industrial recovery (2012-2013), I joined the École des Mines de Nantes in 2013, which later became IMT Atlantique, where I drafted its biodiversity policy. Trained in scientific ecology at the Université de Lorraine (DU) and Aix-Marseille Université (DESU).
Presentation
A senior engineer of the French Corps des Mines1, trained in scientific ecology, I connect technical systems (energy, digital, planning) with the fragility of ecosystems.
I use data, AI and geomatics as tools of inquiry: to objectify situations, reveal the relationships between environments, uses and decisions, and then support more robust public choices in the face of the ecological crisis.
Where I speak from
No viewpoint is neutral: in the interest of honesty, I state the position from which I observe, map and publish. This frame makes explicit everything that follows.
Position — senior engineer of the French Corps des Mines at IMT Atlantique: institutional capital that opens doors, with no guarantee of neutrality.
Trajectory — caver as a teenager, field naturalist (more than 8,600 observations as of 11 September 2026) and geomatician: knowledge first forged by walking and looking.
Territory — Pays de la Loire, the Nantes metropolitan area, a few specific sites (Champ de Manœuvre, campuses): concrete places rather than an abstract "nature".
Tools — iNaturalist, QGIS, AI, open data: instruments that select what I see and how I see it.
Intention — to document the state of living systems and inform the public debates that concern them: I speak from a situated and acknowledged position.
Limits — I am not a long-standing inhabitant of these places and I know them mainly through data; my likely blind spots: vernacular knowledge, global visions and ordinary biodiversity.
What sets me apart
Fieldwork first — exploratory caving in Haute-Savoie from the age of sixteen, up to the Gouffre Jean-Bernard, which was once the world depth record.
The early web — project management of the migration of the Yellow Pages to the Internet, then technical oversight of Voilà, among the first French search engines and web portals.
Territorial public action — economic development, subcontracting mediation, reindustrialisation and industrial recovery.
Ecological transformation — returning to study scientific ecology and building a biodiversity policy based on protocols, partnerships and measurable results.
Field naturalist practice — more than 8,600 opportunistic observations published on iNaturalist as of 11 September 2026 and, separately, participation in four standardised protocols (STERF, PROPAGE, POPReptile, Comptage national des oiseaux des jardins — the French national garden bird count), whose records go to the platforms dedicated to those protocols rather than to iNaturalist, together with the publication of open, verifiable data on sites affected by development projects.
These five registers are not successive ruptures: from the outset they rest on the same interest in complex systems, weak signals and the tools that allow a rigorous reading of them.
Background
Caving and fieldwork
I entered the underground networks of Haute-Savoie at sixteen, with the Groupe Spéléologique Vulcain — alongside Pierre Rias, a pioneer of French caving to whom I owe this initiation. My name appears, in a modest role, in the list of explorers of the Gouffre Jean-Bernard — a karst system of more than 30 kilometres and 1,610 metres of vertical range, which was once the world depth record.2
"Frédéric Pallu, known as Fred, is a sixteen-year-old with plenty of nerve. He joins us, alone, the next day. It is the first time he has climbed up to the chalet, but the path is more than obvious. Yet, caught out by nightfall, he turns right before the refuge and ventures into the rocky cliffs. Wisely, he takes a rope out of his bag and ends his night… tied to a tree."
— Le Gouffre Jean-Bernard, −1602 m, Groupe Spéléologique Vulcain, Editions GAP, 1991, ISBN 2741700311, p. 62 (translated from French).
"Fred [Pallu] and Filou [Philippe Lavabre] start a competition to see who can carry the heaviest load — they would be seen on the trail with loads of over forty kilos and a carrot dangling from a pole to spur themselves on."
— Ibid., p. 66 (translated from French).
1981–1989
I trained as a programmer at CESI in 1981-1982 — a four-month course, no baccalauréat in hand, straight into working life. I continued at the CNAM in evening classes while working full-time, through to the diplôme de premier cycle technique (DPCT, first-cycle technical diploma) in Business Computing, awarded in 1989. Meanwhile: national service as a ski-borne radio operator in a reconnaissance section (scout-skiers) — a specialism that was demanding physically, but also in terms of autonomy and resistance to pressure.
In 1987-1988, I measured the flows of the lower Rhône valley to optimise the release schedules of EDF dams — my first work on the trade-offs between energy and ecosystems, which I extended with a University Diploma in water professions at Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1.
At the same time, I was admitted to the preparatory cycle for the internal competitive examination of the École nationale d'administration, which I completed, and was declared eligible (admissible) in 2000. Building on these responsibilities, I rounded out my path with management training at ESSEC, as part of France Télécom.
2000–2007
From 2000 to 2007, senior expert at France Télécom R&D. Among my main assignments: technical leadership of the cross-cutting TALK project, one of the ten strategic fixed–mobile–Internet convergence programmes carried out jointly by France Télécom, Orange and Wanadoo, under the leadership of the then CEO, Michel Bon.
The TALK project focused on integrating voice technologies for application control and the voice rendering of information — a programme that extended, within a network-convergence logic, earlier work on access interfaces and language-processing engines.
This work on information systems gradually led me towards public responsibilities, where the stakes become territorial, economic and human.
In 2007-2008, after selection by competitive examination, I was a student engineer of the Corps des Télécommunications, trained at Télécom Paris. I took up my first post in Nantes in September 2008. Economic development and innovation officer reporting to the regional prefects of the Pays de la Loire. Regional mediator for inter-company industrial relations and subcontracting, Pays de la Loire (2010-2011).4 In March 2012, appointed commissioner for reindustrialisation to the prefect of the Pays de la Loire region; in July 2012, appointed State commissioner for industrial recovery for the same region, one of the six former reindustrialisation commissioners retained among the twenty-two (2012-2013). Supporting industrial firms in difficulty.5 In 2012-2013, auditor of the 65th national session "Defence Policy" of the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (IHEDN).6 Intensive immersion in strategic, defence and national-sovereignty issues.
2013–2020
From 2013 to 2020, director of corporate relations, director of the endowment fund and director of the incubator of the École des Mines de Nantes, which became IMT Atlantique.
Since 2021
From 2021, I refocused my work on ecological and societal transformation — a theme I helped build into the institution's policy, presented to the School Council in November 2021. I built the biodiversity policy from scratch across three campuses — Brest, Nantes, Rennes — with scientific protocols, NGO partnerships (Bretagne Vivante, LPO, GRETIA, Fédération des Amis de l'Erdre), signed agreements and measurable results.
In parallel, I am personally involved in these same organisations — LPO, Bretagne Vivante, GRETIA — as a field observer contributing to regional surveys and monitoring.
I also teach students, designing and facilitating modules on the Sustainable Development Goals, planetary boundaries and biodiversity, based on a systemic approach and scientific data.
I am involved, alongside naturalist and environmental organisations, in biodiversity conservation files within large urban development operations.
Today
Today, for field ecological analysis, I draw on artificial-intelligence and geomatics tools that directly extend the work I was doing twenty-five years ago on language, data and information systems.
My approach consists in linking observation of living systems, data structuring, mapping and spatial analysis in order to produce objectifiable evidence useful for the ecological understanding of territories and the public debates that concern them.
In 2025, I also took part in the citizen dialogue "Facing crises together" (Faire face aux crises ensemble), organised by Nantes Métropole, with particular attention to preparing territories for the direct and indirect effects of the ecological crisis.
Groupe Spéléologique Vulcain, survey of the Gouffre Jean-Bernard, Therion compilation of 23 July 2025: length 30,017 m, vertical range 1,610 m. Survey data: Topographies-Samoens, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ↩
France Télécom, Centre de mise en œuvre des concours, competitive examination of 27 May 1993: admitted in first place on an admission list closed at 38. ↩
Médiation des relations inter-entreprises industrielles et de la sous-traitance, Rapport d'activité 2010/2011, annex 2 “La liste des médiateurs régionaux”, p. 43; Florence Falvy, “Médiation industrielle : résultat timide dans la région”, Le Journal des Entreprises, 6 May 2011. ↩