On the occasion of the World University Fair on November 16, we are publishing several portraits of alumni. Today, meet Capucine, who obtained her scientific baccalaureate, with international option, in 2015 at Shanghai French School. After engineering studies in materials science at the Imperial College of London, where she obtained a Bachelor in Engineering in 2018 and an Master in Engineering in 2019, she is pursuing a thesis in the field of solar energy and semiconductor materials within the Photovoltaic Institute of Ile-de-France (IPVF) and the Center for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (C2N), in the Paris region.
Capucine, born to a Chinese father and a French mother, arrived in China at the age of two. She studied in Shanghai French School from CM1 (Grade 4) up to Terminale (Grade 12). “My parents wanted my brother and I to have an experience of Chinese school. Then in CM1, I joined the Shanghai French School. At first, I was a little intimidated by my classmates who mastered the French language, but I quickly took the lead”.
Capucine took part in the very first batch of the bilingual French-English stream of Shanghai French School, in Sixième (Grade 6). “I continued my studies in this language stream until I finished middle school, and when I arrived in high school I chose the American international stream (SIA) because I was already considering moving to an Anglo-Saxon country to continue my higher education there. Combining SIA and a scientific Baccalauréat allowed me to obtain a very complete background with a good balance between science and humanities“.
Extra-curricular activities are an integral part of life at Shanghai French School. Capucine has taken part in numerous sporting and cultural activities, but it is her investment in community service that has particularly marked her. As vice-president of the Campus Chapter of Habitat for Humanity “I helped organize several trips to China with the aim of building houses for the poors. Each experience was unique and enriching, and I was deeply impressed by what high schoolers could build with their own hands in just a few days. ”
Capucine keeps a strong attachment to the Shanghai French School. “Those years have greatly contributed to the formation of my personality and to the various choices that I was able to make afterwards in my path of higher education. The quality of teaching at Shanghai French School is excellent and I consider myself very fortunate to have been in a school where the environment enables both intellectual and personal development. The variety of extracurricular activities I was able to participate in made it very easy for me to fit in wherever I went later. “