Transcriber: Octavio Delvecchio
Reviewer: Renée Arias (Applause) So we all like natural aquatic
environments, like a river, for example, with transparent water, green vegetation,
birds singing, or a wild beach washed by blue waves, or the ocean full of fishes and corals or the crystal clear ground water. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to imagine
the holidays of your dreams. In fact, the scenario is going
to change drastically because I'm going to show you
this much less nice picture. This is a natural aquatic environment, but the water was dramatically
contaminated. So now I have a question for you. Do you know which is the link
between the two scenarios? Us. All of us, we are the link. But why? Because human beings are very
inefficient machines from a waste management point of view. For example, when we eat, we are
assimilating just a part of the food. All the rest is wasted in form of solid
and liquid excrements producing wastewater. More than 50 cubic meter per year
of wastewaters are produced on average per year of yarn. But not only. All the industries that need to use water
in their production processes are producing huge amount of wastewaters. So now just think to the huge quantity of
wastewaters that can be produced by the 8 billion people on this planet. But what are exactly these wastewaters
and where do they end up? Wastewaters are basically
water at the beginning, taken from natural water sources for the
production chain of... for being used in the production chain of many anthropic
activities for all our exigencies, more in general. At the end of the production chain, this water is not anymore only water,
it's water plus contaminants. Consider that in our waste there are also
contaminants like antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, viruses, colorants, and many,
many other toxic compounds. So basically, before giving back to
the environment, the wastewaters, they pass through what is called
the wastewater treatment plant. Is it the end of the story? No. Unfortunately no. Treating the water we are contaminating
is very expensive, energy consuming and a huge
source of gas emissions. Just consider that wastewater treatment
plants are responsible of about 3-5% of the total anthropogenic
greenhouse gas emissions. But not only. The problem is that together
with our waste, we are also losing very precious elements
that we would reuse also as energy sources. For example, nitrogen. Nitrogen is an essential component
in the proteins of our body. But nitrogen is also a key ingredient
in fertilizers. Just think that in the standard way of
producing one kilo of nitrogen for fertilizers, you need to burn
about one kilo of fossil fuels. And for this producing also
carbon dioxide. And we are wasting the nitrogen. Another example. Phosphorus. Phosphorus is a fundamental component of
the molecules in our body that are carrying the energy. Phosphorus is also a key ingredient for constructing car batteries,
for example. Consider that the
natural sources of phosphorus on our planet are limited.
It's going to finish. So we really must think to the
fact that we are wasting it. All these aspects cannot be ignored in an era where it's so important to find
new ways for renewable energies. So how can we at the same time remove
contaminants and recover the precious elements and
the chemical energy in the water we are wasting every day? How can we reshape the wastewater cycle
in the logic of a circular economy? And here we are arriving to what am I
working on as a researcher at Inria. I am exploring and studying new
biotechnologies for treating wastewaters in order to find more efficient solutions
in terms of gas emissions, energy, costs, and also providing renewable
energy sources. But before arriving at the core of
what I'm working on, why biotechnologies? You must know that in nature
a micro world is active, made of microorganisms, and when
they are all together, they can do very beautiful things
for the environment. That's why we want to exploit
and amplify their potential, growing them in an environment that
we can technically control called a "bioreactor". In particular, I am studying bioprocesses involving
microalgae and bacteria. We can grow them in wastewaters
because they are able to use the contaminants in our waste and to
transform them in other molecules. But wait one moment. Who are these guys? Microalgae are very fascinating
microorganisms. They can accumulate nitrogen and
phosphorus in the cell, for example. It means that when they
are growing on wastewaters, they can accumulate the nitrogen
and the phosphorus in our waste to transform them in other molecules,
valuable molecules, that we can further extract for producing
biofuels, bioplastics, biofertilizers, other byproducts, so entering in this logic
of circular economy. If you want, microalgae are like
microscopic plants growing in the water. They can perform photosynthesis. That means that they can capture the
energy from the sun to transform the carbon dioxide in
biological materials. Like all the plants, in consequence of photosynthesis, microalgae can produce oxygen that they
can provide to other microorganisms to grow, like bacteria, instead of
supplying it artificially. That means saving lots
of energy and money. Bacteria, apart of consuming oxygen, can provide lots of benefits to microalgae because they can provide
vitamins for growth, breaking down complex molecules for algae, and also provide them with carbon
dioxide for photosynthesis. So growing hundreds of different species all together in a bioreactor, we have created an environment where
billions of possible interactions are possible. And understanding these billions of
possible interactions is actually where things become very,
very complicated. So how we can understand the dynamics of this micro world of interactive
microorganism? How we can control it? And here, we finally arrive to what I am
working on as a researcher at Inria. I am developing mathematical
representations of these ecosystems to see what is happening
but in a computer. Mathematical models are very powerful. You can see the invisible thanks to them. They can really help you in understanding
what is happening behind the scene of this world of
microalgae and bacteria, and how to direct it for giving clean
water back to the environment and for recovering the precious resources
we are wasting every day. These models are mathematical monsters,
very difficult to master. Adjusting the output of these
models according to the reality is very challenging
and requires real data. Experimental measurements. That's why in my research group
at Inria, we are a joint team, together with biologists and
microbiologists from the Laboratory of Oceanography
of Villefranche. So developing a mathematical
representation of the reality seems a very exciting job. And indeed it is. But sometimes, this micro world
of interactive microorganisms, it's so integrated that its complexity
is pushing us really at the limits of our understanding,
of our knowledge. And sometimes, indeed, we really
do not understand. Anyway, giving up is never the favorite
choice of a researcher. We must perseverate for weeks, months,
sometimes for years, until we find a way that can work. And this is actually what I am
struggling with in my job. I am trying to find a new way. Instead of being stuck by the lack of knowledge in
biological systems, I am trying to explore a new
numerical approach that is involving artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence nowadays
is widely used for plenty of applications like image
recognition or cars that can drive alone. But still, it was not deeply
used to explore the complexity of biological systems. And that's why I want to involve in this
story of wastewater treatment, artificial neural networks, because I do believe that lots of
key informations are hidden in the data we collect. And artificial neural networks can learn
directly from the data. For example, we often observe phenomena of inhibition
or limitation of the activity of these
microorganisms, and we don't know why, but artificial neural networks can find
in the data the reason of the problem, the information we are missing, because they are mathematically designed
to have a learning process similar to a human brain, even if, of course,
it's an artificial brain. So artificial intelligence can really
give a very important contribution for making more efficient this synergistic
collaboration between our friends, microalgae and bacteria, to transform our waste into resources, to reduce gas emissions, and of course, to
give clean water back to the environment. So I want to use artificial intelligence for climate change mitigation, for reducing the energy need and for giving clean water back
to the environment. But all this, all this
is just the top of the iceberg. Artificial intelligence has really
the potential to give a very fundamental contribution to plenty
of environmental and ecological efforts, because these algorithms can
process big data sets from a huge network of
environmental sensors. They can track deforestation, air and water quality, or the health of an ecosystem. For example, artificial intelligence can
detect the biodiversity just from the noises recorded in a forest. So, in conclusion, by exploiting the power of
artificial intelligence, we can really gain deeper insights into
environmental challenges and work towards a more sustainable and
ecologically balanced future. Merci. (Applause)