Romain Di Costanzo

CEO - Co-founder of HYCCO

Toulouse, Occitanie, France

About

I have been working for 7 years in the space industry (CNES, ESA) as research engineer, on various projects, even though most of my work concerned the space debris topic. Then various opportunities led me to work abroad, successively in Tasmania (Hobart) and in Canada (Vancouver) as research assistant in physical oceanography. Since 2017, I decided to put my skills and stamina into renewable energies. I initiated the HYCCO project, willing to break some of the current technological limitations on hydrogen fuel cells, by increasing their lifetime and reducing their weight. Our goal is to enter markets highly dependant on fossile fuels, like heavy duty mobility or aeronautics, where zero emission solutions are essential if we want to reduce our green house gas emission drasticall, and rapidly. We need to tackle climate change if we want our societies to flourish and exist the way we know them. We need that change now. Let's make oil history.

Experience

  • CEO at HYCCO
    Nov 2017 - Present · 8 yrs 9 mos

    HYCCO is a French startup that develops an innovative bipolar plate fabrication process for high temperature PEM fuel cells.

  • The University of British Columbia (1 yr 8 mos)
    • Construction, deployment and analysis of data from surface current drifting buoys
      Feb 2016 - Jun 2017 · 1 yr 5 mos

      An enormous amount of fresh water enters the Strait of Georgia from the Fraser River (some 2000 m3/s in winter low-flow periods, and more than 10000 m3/sec in June and July during the peak runoff period). This fresh water mixes with the salty ocean water in the Strait, and EVENTUALLY flows out into the Pacific Ocean. But how exactly does this fresh water get to the Pacific? And how long does this take? One way of knowing this is to release a smaller number of tracked drifters. As these make their way to wherever they go, we get a continuous track of their location through a satellite telemetry system. From this track we can determine how fast as well as how far they go, and learn a lot more about turbulence of the circulation in the Strait as well. https://drifters.eos.ubc.ca/

    • Characterisation of the plume of sediment of the Fraser River from high resolution satellite imagery
      Nov 2015 - Feb 2016 · 4 mos

      Here we examine the plume’s shape, location, and area, and the variation of these parameters with changes in wind and river forcing, by examining a 13-year time series of high-resolution MODIS satellite imagery for the concentration of suspended particulate matter (SPM).

  • Creation of a space objects database at CSSI
    Sep 2014 - Apr 2015 · 8 mos

    Creation of a space objects database containing every single object that ever been into space. As numerous sources of information are available the job consist in identifying reliable sources, get the data, create a database, and an automatic procedures to update it.

  • Analysis of GPS buoy plus Inertial Navigation System data at University of Tasmania
    Nov 2013 - Jun 2014 · 8 mos

    Analysis of data collected from a GPS equipped buoy deployed in an open sea in Tasmania. A mooring pressure tide gauge deployed underneath the buoy was used as a reference measurement. Two baselines were also used for differential processing. PPP and DGPS processing combined with INS data have been compared to assess the best possible accuracy through a range of processing strategies.

  • CSSI (6 yrs 1 mo)
    • Modelling the Evolution of Debris on Earth's Environment
      Feb 2012 - Sep 2013 · 1 yr 8 mos

      Presently, the low earth orbit space objects density is high enough to potentially lead to an uncontrolled collisional cascading effect if future major break-ups occur. In this context, we have been developing a statistical model to simulate the space environment evolution to guarantee the sustainability of space activities.

    • Space Engineer
      Sep 2007 - Feb 2012 · 4 yrs 6 mos

      Various mission for the French Space Agency (CNES), as technical leader, consultant and software engineer.