The nano scale flow
sorting solution
EVs – Viruses – LNPs

Sophie always wanted to “make things.” By setting up Hekat, her aim is to create high value-added industrial activity.

A graduate of the French Ecole Polytechnique, Sophie has spent his entire career in optical instrumentation. After her thesis in quantum physics at the Kastler Brossel laboratory at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she joined France Telecom’s Research Center, then in 1997 a small industrial company: Photonetics, specializing in optical instruments and sensors.

Sophie soon became Deputy Managing Director: she created a new strategic industrial activity within the company and managed its technical, industrial and commercial development.

Thus she actively contributed to the very rapid growth of Photonetics, until its sale to the Danish group Great Nordic.

Late 2020, after the ordeal of COVID 19 Sophie decides to use her know-how and energy to help a cause she has always cared about: developing her own industrial project.

With the help of ALPhANOV’s Technology Center, of Chrysa-link incubator and of the Nouvelle Aquitaine region: ExoFlow was born: it gave birth to Hekat in January 2023.

A doctor in marine biochemistry, Mathias Girault is the company’s microfluidic specialist.

After completing a Master’s degree in marine biogeochemistry from the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanology, Mathias left for Japan in 2009 to do a thesis at the Tokyo University of Science and Technology, funded by the prestigious Mext (Monbukagakuchou) Scholarship from the Japanese Government, offered to the best students and researchers.

During his doctorate he studied the impact of phosphate on phytoplankton and he realized the interest of using microfluidic techniques to make quantified and reliable analyzes of the interactions between each cell and its microenvironment. In 2013 he joined the Tokyo University of Medicine and developed a brand new microfluidic cancer cell sorting system, based on pattern recognition algorithms.

Back in France in 2016, Mathias continued his research career at the Paul Pascal Research Center, funded by private contracts and the prestigious Marie Curie European Fellowship.

A graduate of the French Ecole Polytechnique and the ENST (Telecom Paris), Philippe has devoted his entire career to the research and development of innovative optical instruments. He is in charge of the design and development of both the optical part and the electronics.

After starting out in the 1980s as an R&D engineer on fiber optic sensors at the Central Research Laboratory of Thomson CSF, Philippe spent a large part of his career at Photonetics, where he was the first employee in 1984 until becoming its Scientific Director in 2000.

Philippe is a keen and creative mind and the inventor of 23 patents in the field of optics and signal processing. Passionate about photography and aviation, he founded Gerpho in 2005, a company specializing in aerial photography. In 2012, in conjunction with the R&D teams of the French start-up Acute 3D, he developed a high-definition and large-scale 3D aerial photogrammetry activity, by plane and helicopter.

In 2021, Philippe sold Gerpho because of inner ear problems that prevented him from flying. He decided to join Hekat to put all his technical know-how at the disposal of this exciting project.