Thierry Pain is a glassblower and polisher in precision optics at Rennes Institute of Chemical Sciences (ISCR, CNRS, INSA Rennes, ENSC Rennes, Université Rennes 1). The CNRS crystal medal rewards those who, through their creativity, their technical skills and their sense of innovation, contribute alongside academic teachers/researchers, to the advancement of knowledge and to the excellence of French research.
Thierry Pain elaborates a variety of pieces of glass and develops a unique expertise in glass techniques. Mr. Pain is thus a key person and an essential agent for the institute but also for other structures around Rennes.
His competences and singular expertise recognized in the work of quartz and opticals polishing, are exploited in particular in the ISCR Glasses & Ceramics team which became, thanks to his contribution, the only group in Europe to be able to perform all the operations necessary for the preparation and characterization of infrared lenses: cutting of prisms, precision polishing. He is an expert in a barely practiced technique that is the production of quartz pieces involving work at very high temperatures (1600-1700° C), a technique mastered even for large pieces up to a diameter of 110 mm.
His achievements go far beyond the academic sphere. He is regularly contacted and consulted to design glass pieces for private companies, in particular those which have been created thanks to the transfer of technologies developed in the UMR (Diafir, Umicore, Le Verre Fluoré, Selenoptics, Surfactgreen,…) . Beyond his direct contribution to science, Mr. Pain has been collaborating for several years with artists from Rennes “Beaux-arts” School, including currently one glass artist hosted in the laboratory for his research work in collaboration with UMR scientists. He is also designing with a student of “Beaux-arts”, in response to an order from the city of Rennes, a large chandelier for the former "Pasteur" science faculty hall. He's a real glass artist engineer !
The laboratory has developed a new air cooler of which Mr. Pain is co-inventor. This innovation is protected by two patent applications in France and in Europe:
- Patent application FR n ° 3081979 filed on 05/31/2018 and entitled "Réfrigérant à air"
- Patent application EP n ° 3575729 filed on 05/31/2019 and entitled "Air cooler"
These two patent applications are still being examined by the Patent Offices and have not yet been granted.
