Personal details: I was born in Saint-Dié (Vosges, France) on 31/05/1964. Married, 3 children.
Present position: First class Director of Research (DR1) of INRIA, working at INRIA Research Centre in Nancy (Lorraine) and also in the laboratory LORIA (CNRS, UMR 7503, also affiliated to Nancy University) in Nancy, France.
Education:
- Engineer Diploma (1986) in Computer Science from the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine
- PhD (1990) in Computer Science from the University Henri Poincaré, Nancy, where I defended my dissertation entitled "A functional model of the cortex: the cortical column".
- Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) in 1997, entitled "Neuromimetic Intelligence".
- Master degree in Psychology, one in Physiology and another one in Mechanics (University of Nancy in 1992, 1991 and 1985, resp).
Activities: As the leader of the CORTEX team (30 people) which concentrates connectionist activities in INRIA-Nancy/LORIA-CNRS, I was or I am currently the supervisor of 30 PhD students. My topics of research are related to Computational Neuroscience and to Artificial Intelligence:
- Concerning Computational Neuroscience, I am mostly interested, from a cognitive neuroscience point of view, in the understanding of human cognition as a result of interacting systems of memory. To that end, I have developed and refined a number of biologically inspired connectionist models related to several brain structures (several cortical regions, but also hippocampus, cerebellum, colliculus, amygdala, basal ganglia, etc.), underlying their processing and representational abilities. An important goal would be to associate such different and complementary models, in a global view of the cognitive brain, also called General Artificial Intelligence. I find it also interesting and necessary to master computational aspects of such models and to accurately understand their information flows and related dynamics. This is particularly important for large scale models and for embedding them in autonomous robotics. I am also very interested in Neurophysiology and in Brain-Computer Interface, rising important questions about interfacing the brain and artificial systems.
- Concerning Artificial Intelligence, I work in the domains of machine learning and Neuro-Symbolic Integration. I have participated in academic collaborations and industrial applications involving the use of connectionist and symbolic tools. I have also a long experience in signal and image processing.
Responsabilities related to my activities of research: I was the coordinator of the MIX BRA ESPRIT european project on NeuroSymbolic Integration (1994-1997). I was involved in Neuronet and Neurocolt european networks of excellence and in the MirrorBot FET european project for modeling mirror neurons for multimodal integration in autonomous robotics (2002-2005). I was responsible of the MAPS french ANR project for the design of collicular models for visuomotor tasks. I am presently involved in the KEOPS ANR project about early visual processing. I am responsible of the Cortina associated team with the universities of Valparaiso and Santiago (Chile) about retinal processing. I launched and I am still involved in the NeuroComp initiative which gathers Computational Neuroscience activities in France. I am also responsible for the Network of Cognitive Science for the East of France.
Publications: My publication activity is presented here.
Misc: I own a French and an international patent on the use of artificial neural networks in steel making.
Last update: 12/2010