Sylvain Coutu
Fields of expertise
• Nature Finance
• Agriculture financial risk management
• Environmental engineering
• Insurance industry
• Agriculture financial risk management
• Environmental engineering
• Insurance industry
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND
• PhD in Environmental Engineering (EPFL)• Master in Environmental Fluid Mechanics (exchange, MIT - Universita di Genova)
• Diplôme d'ingénieur des grandes écoles (ENGEES)
WORK EXPERIENCE
• Head of Agirculture & Nature Insurance at AXA Climate• Head of Innovation Special Lines at Swiss Re
• Senior Agriculture Underwriter Agriculture at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions
• Research Engineering at European Space Agency
AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
• Senior Expert Advisor at Nature Finance [since 2024• Member of FAO Technical Finance Committee (FTAC) on Food Security [since 2024]
• Advisory Board of Quideos (Agriculture/Fintech start-up) [since 2024]
• Selected as Top-10 most innovative global AgriTech leaders The Inc Magazine [2023]
• Advisory Board of Green Triangle (Agriculture/Insurtech start-up) [since 2018]
• Chair of Agriculture Finance for NASA Harvest, NASA’s agriculture program [since 2016]
• FNSF post-Doc grant to Stanford University [2013]
• Boston - Strasbourg Twin's science scholarship to MIT [2008]
Publications
Selected publications
| Coutu S. and multiple others FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO |
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 – Financing to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms (2024) |
| Coutu S. et multiple others European Commission |
Proceedings of the Workshop on Alternative Business Models for Pesticide Reduction (2024) |
| Sylvain Coutu, Inbal Becker-Reshef, Loïc Pellissier Nature |
Carbon farming: integrate biodiversity metrics (2022) |
| Sylvain Coutu, Inbal Becker-Reshef, Alyssa K. Whitcraft, Chris Justice Nature |
Food security: underpin with public and private data sharing (2020) |
| I. Becker-Reshef, S. Coutu et al AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts |
Leveraging Earth Observations to Inform Early Action and Policy, in Support of Food Security (2019) |
Teaching & PhD
Teaching
Management of Technology
Courses
Nature finance
This course explores the many financial instruments that can come as a support for protection and regeneration of natural assets.