I-CHEM’ALGAE (“Challenge 5 - Sécurité Alimentaire et Défi Démographique Ressources biologiques, exploitation durable des écosystèmes et Bioéconomie”; axe 6 - Bioéconomie: technologies spécifiques et approches système.”) aims to develop an original integrated strategy to optimize microalgae biorefinery, based on metabolomics (by using chemometric tools to merge multimodal and multiscale spectroscopic data sets) and process engineering (including cultivation in photobioreactors, deconstruction/fractionation aspects). This strategy will address the technological issues related to chemotyping/dereplication of microalgae and cell resistance to develop an optimized and intensified biorefinery approach for microalgae entire valorisation. Indeed, even if microalgae are mainly known for their potential in biofuel production, they could represent innovative and biologically promising resources for high added value sectors such as cosmetics, provided that efficient tools are available for their chemical characterization. This collaborative project, involves three academic and one industrial partners, the latter being specialized in the development and production of cosmetic ingredients. This project will thus exploit the synergy between process engineering, analytical, chemoinformatic and phyto-chemistry skills with those of a major player in the development of blue biotechnology in the cosmetic field (Givaudan) in order to meet the scientific and technological objectives while taking into account environmental and industrial concerns (solvent selection and time requirement of the global workflow). Thus the PRCE financing tool is clearly consistent with the objectives of this project. Beside a coordination task, the scientific and technical program of i-Chem’Algae is organized in 4 main tasks developed over 36 months. The innovative nature is reflected by the global project structure that aims to provide an integrated approach for microalgae biorefinery, but also within the three technical tasks. Task 1 aims to develop a chemical and micro-mechanical pattern recognition model for microalgae screening according to the global nature of their chemical composition and cell resistance, these two aspects being of primary importance for both biorefinery engineering and valorisation. The main novelty consists in the fusion of multi-modal and multi-scale non-invasive spectroscopy data stets recorded on entire cell to build the pattern recognition model. The objective of task 2 is to develop a procedure for microalgae biomass deconstruction and fractionation guided by the Task 1 results and to produce chemically simplified extracts, which will be further submitted to a fine chemical profiling (Task 3). Task 2 also includes cultivation under photobioreactor control in order to allow a continuous state biomass production. The objective of Task 3 is to develop procedure for the chemical characterization of small metabolites mainly based on dereplication, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, chemometric tools and databasing and to connect these data with biological activities. Moreover, a combination of original tools such as LC-NMR and artificial intelligence will be implemented to speed up the de novo structure elucidation process in case of novel compounds. Finally, Task 4, aims to provide a technical and economic evaluation of the proposed integrated strategy for the development of microalgae-based new cosmetic ingredients. I-Chem'Algae is thus a research project with 3 kinds of final deliverables including knowledge acquisition by developing an original strategy for microalgae biorefinery - this integrated approach being transferable on other starting materials -, societal aspects with new concepts for the use of alternative raw materials (here microalgae) compatible with the concepts of circular economy and the use of sustainable processes and finally industrial developments by the development of original microalgae-derived cosmetic active ingredients.