In agreement with the Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning, Bernard Bigot, the CEA Chairman has appointed Jean Therme as deputy director for renewable energies, alongside himself.

The creation of this new post tallies well with the new title of the CEA, which has become the "French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission" marking the desire for an even stronger involvement for the organisation in research promoting the development of non-carbon energy sources.

As well as its research on nuclear fission and fusion, for almost 10 years the CEA has carried out R&D activities in the areas of solar energy and energy storage for electrical vehicles, fuel cells, biofuels and second-generation hydrogen production.

In particular, the new Deputy Director for Renewable Energies will have a role accompanying and representing the CEA Chairman to government authorities, academic partners and industrialists, in all matters relating to new energy technologies.

This choice consolidates the new organisation for research on new energy technologies (NET) within the CEA, for which the technological research component is entirely co-ordinated by the DRT and essentially localised within his remit.

For several years, as part of his role as the Director of Technological Research, Jean Therme has played a driving role in the build-up of research on new energy technologies. After having created the LITEN (Laboratory for Innovation in New Energy Technologies and Nanomaterials) in 2005, he was the main instigator of France's National Solar Energy Institute (INES) and, more recently, he was strongly involved in the creation of the new French manufacturing line for batteries, with the Renault Nissan Alliance.

Born in 1953, Jean Therme is a physicist-engineer, who graduated from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG). He joined CEA in 1990, and held the post of Director of CEA-Leti in 1999, before becoming director of the centre at Grenoble in 2000 and CEA Director of Technological Research in 2003, posts which he still currently occupies.

Having instigated the Minatec innovation centre, alongside the INPG, the first European research centre in the field of micro-and nanotechnologies, Jean Therme has also been the champion of several centres of research excellence such as Digiteo Lab, dedicated to complex systems, Nanobio and Clinatec, dedicated to the meeting points of nanotechnology and the fields of biology and health, the INES at Chambéry and GIANT, the large innovation campus in Grenoble.