An ENSTA Student Wins the Nouvelles Avancées Contest

Created in 2010 by ENSTA, the Nouvelles Avancées contest aims to bring science, literature, and society together through a multidisciplinary approach that is central to the School’s educational philosophy. Co-organized with École Polytechnique since 2017, the competition has been organized since 2022 by the International Center for French Language and Culture at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, with continued strong involvement from ENSTA staff.

Sinead Namur, director of the “Languages, Culture, and Communication” department, serves as co-director of the competition. Maïwenn Morvan, deputy director of the department at the Brest campus, and Dzianis Kandakou, academic coordinator, were part of the team of expert readers who conducted the initial selection of the submitted short stories. Guillaume Van Herpen, library and press resources coordinator at the media library, contributed directly to the contest’s success through his operational support for the organization.

During the ceremony, Estelle Iacona, Executive Director of ENSTA, presented the award in the “Students” category. Thomas Loiseleux, Director of Education and Research, presented the “Arts, Science, and Citizens” award. Finally, Jérôme Perez, professor at ENSTA’s Applied Mathematics Unit and a member of the jury, presented one of the prizes in the “Francophone Countries” category.

These prizes were funded in part by contributions from ENSTA Alumni, the ENSTA alumni association, and the SAE, the Society of Friends of ISAE and ENSTA.

For this 17th edition, participants were invited to examine and explore the various forms of intelligence, their scope, and the many issues surrounding them. More than 400 authors submitted their writings on this theme.

Among them, Edouard Berthelon, a sophomore at the ENSTA Paris-Saclay campus, won the special prize for scientific short fiction for his story “Le diable des mers” (“The Devil of the Seas”), a particularly gripping survival tale in which a shipwreck survivor clings to life after a bewildering encounter with a sea creature.

Édouard Berthelon’s short story will soon be published in the anthology of winning stories from the Nouvelles Avancées contest, published annually by Presses de l’ENSTA, the school’s publishing house.

The theme of the next edition of the Nouvelles Avancées contest will be “Along the Waves: Exploring the Frequencies of Reality and the Imagination.”