Bio

My career has developed around building and using Adaptive Optics (AO) systems and solving the corresponding numerical challenges, using High Performance Computing (HPC), for simulations, data processing and real-time control. After my PhD, I participated in the development of an instrument, still unique today, using a constellation of artificial stars created using high power Lasers at the Gemini Observatory. After spending 3 years in this organisation, in Hawaii and then Chile, I came back to France and started ex nihilo a R&D program around HPC techniques for astronomical instrumentation, first leading a national initiative for the implementation of a development platform for AO and then coordinating a large European project aiming at prototyping new concepts for AO real-time control using emerging technologies. What was first a pure R&D program has now turned into a major contribution to the field and responds today to very strategic issues in astronomical instrumentation and, more generally, industry. While I am now coordinating engineering teams to implement these solutions in facility instruments, I have also initiated a new R&D program, relying on emerging data-driven techniques based on deep learning, to tackle a number of issues related to the always increasing complexity of AO systems. Industry engagement is also a key aspect of these R&D programs, both to co-design novel solutions as we did in past European projects opening up for new market opportunities but also to spin-off original developments to industry partners so they can enhance already existing lines of products. Over the years, I have built a very strong network of international collaborators and have tried to leverage this experience, both for my research and at the institutional level. I am today coordinating a worldwide network of experts, including academia and industry, funded by the Horizon 2020 program, leading research on Cyber-Physical Systems and addressing the needs of a variety of applications. I have also been strongly involved in various initiatives to strengthen the international engagement of universities. Finally, equal opportunity is, to me, one the greatest challenges faced by our modern societies. I believe each action counts and am trying to apply equal opportunity principles every time I have leverage.