Deep-tech infrastructure cannot be built on guesswork, academia is the critical training ground for engineering rigor.
Some might say my journey with EAPOSYS began after my PhD and postdoc if you trace it through my academic timeline. But if you follow the thread of passion, it’s been part of who I am for as long as I can remember: I love geology. I love the planet. I love nature. I love rocks.
Early on, I built a promising academic profile: strong grades throughout, consistently ranked among the top students, culminating in a Master’s in Structural Geology. But while academia was always calling, so was life. I initially set furthering my postgrad studies aside to start a family but when those plans stalled, I decided to pour that energy back into myself. I redirected everything I had left into the passion that had been waiting: a PhD. Right after starting this new chapter, life surprised me with an unexpected twist. I fell pregnant and now had to master the ultimate balance of both callings, navigating motherhood and academia simultaneously.
My PHD led me directly into high-stakes real-world science, focused on the micro-seismotectonic characterisation of a low-seismicity fault zone for critical infrastructure at the Mühleberg nuclear power plant. Unlike typical research PhDs spent isolated in an office, my topic carried a pressing real-world agenda.
The most dangerous gap in the energy transition is the massive divide between paper promises and deployed infrastructure.
Two children later, PhD in hand, both my husband and I were fortunate to secure a grant and moved to Germany to pursue our postdoctoral research. I spent the next two years working on characterising landslide-induced microseismicity and its implications for unstable slope dynamics. Then an unexpected end to that chapter hit when we applied for a continuation which was denied. At 37, age parameters worked against us and it forced a moment of deep reflection. While academia served a vital role, I realised my personal pursuit was shifting. I no longer wanted research that lived and died by the next grant cycle. I wanted to build, work directly with people, and experience impact creation firsthand. My passion for earth sciences remained unchanged, but it found a new expression, one designed for growth and real-world impact.
Ideas seldom come to life without the right connections surfacing at the right time. One of those key moments was meeting Patrick Scherrer, a financial mind whose take on the economic system was unlike anything I’d encountered in academia. I already suspected technology alone wouldn’t fix what was broken, and my exchanges with him sharpened that conviction. But the moment that mattered most was a single idea he put to me, plainly: that I would never find a job that suited me and I’d have to build my own. I didn’t have the answer yet, not even a plan, just the conviction that I would have to eventually build my own path. So when my postdoc “vacation” as he phrased it, ended, I met with him to do exactly that.
My father Lucien, also a serial entrepreneur, and an engineer by training, formed in nuclear energy, was our mutual connection, and together, we founded a company that would focus on my domain of expertise. I would end up facing that question that had consumed me for the longest time: how could we close the gap between carbon-neutral targets and the physical reality of reaching them? Pairing my geological science with their deep business acumen gave the foundation we needed to build something that mattered.
Geothermal energy is the heat beneath our feet. It is vast, decarbonised, and always-on. The heat stored in the accessible crust is measured on a scale that dwarfs the world’s remaining reserves of oil, gas, coal, and uranium. The real constraint is our ability to reach it, and to reach it without the induced seismicity that stimulation and fracking bring. EAOPSYS became the answer: a customisable deep geothermal closed-loop system reference architecture, matching future energy policies and socio-economical needs to unlock deep geothermal anywhere.
How did we get here? I have to take you back to years of rigorous family debates with my father and my brother Jonathan (also a geologist). A bottle of wine, and no shortage of opinions. We consistently probed the intersection of ecology, society, and subterranean energy. It was in one of those later discussions while building EAOPSYS that Jonathan challenged my body of work with a game changing hypothesis: what if this geothermal system could harness its own energy output drill additional capacity and increase system efficiency. What an idea. Lucien then did what he does best: he drew our different perspectives together, connected the dots, and shaped the core idea behind EAPOSYS’ incremental three-well concept.
Science met business through our complementary strengths. The gap between ambitious geothermal targets and our current reality hasn’t closed, but we’re one step closer than we were. We earned it the way we earn everything: