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 work where data, territories and living systems intersect, to help public decision-makers and institutions make better decisions in the face of the ecological crisis, on the basis of facts, maps and indicators.
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 advocate. 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 8,000 observations) 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 defend living systems, document public debates and have an experience formally recognised (VAE, accreditation of prior experiential learning): 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, then the world depth record.
The early web — technical project management of the Yellow Pages online and then of Voilà, among the first French search engines and web portals.
Territorial public action — economic development, subcontracting mediation, productive recovery, national defence strategy (IHEDN).
Ecological transformation — returning to study scientific ecology and building a biodiversity policy based on protocols, partnerships and measurable results.
Field naturalist practice — more than 8,000 observations published on iNaturalist, participation in scientific protocols (PROPAGE, POPreptiles, STERF), and production of data used in development-related litigation.
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 lists of explorers and surveyors of the Gouffre Jean-Bernard — a karst system of nearly 30 kilometres, then the world depth record.
"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).
1981–1988
I trained as a programmer at CESI in 1981-1982 — a four-month course, no baccalauréat in hand, straight into working life. I completed my training at the CNAM in evening classes while working full-time elsewhere. In between: 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. Subcontracting mediator. Productive Recovery Commissioner — supporting industrial firms in difficulty at regional level — appointed by order of the Prime Minister, published in the Journal officiel. In 2012-2013, auditor of the 65th national session "Defence Policy" of the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale (IHEDN). Intensive immersion in strategic, defence and national-sovereignty issues.
2014–2020
From 2014 to 2020, director of corporate relations, director of the endowment fund, head of the incubator at 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, approved by 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.
Re-learning ecology
I revalidated my fundamentals in ecology through continuing education: a University Diploma at L3 level at the Université de Lorraine, attached to the LIEC laboratory, with highest honours — top of the class; a DESU at M1 level in Marseille / IMBE, with honours.
I am involved, alongside naturalist and environmental organisations, in cases defending biodiversity 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.
This approach is grounded in active field naturalist practice: nearly 8,000 documented observations on iNaturalist, as well as participation in several monitoring protocols for amphibians, birds and insects — some of whose sites now lie at the heart of proceedings linked to development projects, such as the ZAC du Champ de Manœuvre in Nantes.
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.