Board of Directors

Richard Sempéré, PhD, is oceanographer, marine and atmospheric geochemist, director of research at CNRS and founding director of the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO) up until 2021.

His research interests include the exploration of sources and sinks of natural organic matter in aquatic environments, the intersection of the carbon cycle and microbial communities under global change conditions.

His current research focuses on microplastics and organic contaminants in atmospheric and aquatic systems ( PI of the European Research project Andromeda dealing with micro-and nanoplastics in the Ocean, JPI Ocean).

Richard Sempéré has piloted and co-piloted numerous EU and national projects  such as UVECO, MERMEX, MEDPOP, Blue Pollut and CareMed. He has over 110 publications.

Sophie Gambardella's research is in the field of international and European marine environmental law and more specifically on the international management of marine living resources.

Her research aims to understand the legal coexistence of conservation and preservation logics; to consider the articulation of marine environmental law with other branches of law as well as the relationship between science and law in this field.

François Sabatier, Associate professor in Geography and  Director of the Geography-Planning-Environment department of the ALLSH Faculty and director of the Master Specialisation  COAST (Coastal Management and Vulnerabilities) of the GAED (Geography-Planning-Environment-Development) master's degree.  His research focuses on the observation, quantification and prediction of coastal erosion for fundamental and applied research purposes. In this context, he has extensively studied the shoreline variations of several Mediterranean beaches, which led him to propose a shoreline recession forecasting method (used today for natural coastal risk management).

His work also proposes sediment balances according to a source-to-sink approach, which underlines the role of the decrease in fluvial sand inputs to beaches in explaining their erosion during the 20th century. After having particularly investigated the impact and efficiency of hard engineering structures on beaches, he is now interested in Nature-based Solutions to anticipate and adapt to climate change. To date, François Sabatier has co-supervised 7 theses, directed more than 50 master's theses and participated in a dozen international research programmes. François mainly teaches physical geography, geomorphology and natural hazards, with an emphasis on coastal and fluvial hazards. He also participates in the dissemination of research work by taking part in several scientific committees of local authorities such as the observatory of shoreline variations in PACA (Monlittoral.fr) supported by the DREAL and the Region.

Strategic environmental planner and Researcher in sustainable development with more than 15 years of experience in designing, writing, implementing and monitoring European and international cooperation projects (e.g. Erasmus Mundus, Interreg, LIFE coordinator).

Expertise in the development and implementation of strategies at EC, national and local level in different fields including education. Specialist in participatory methods and design of evaluation systems and information management.