JCQ's website

I'm an INRIA postdoctorate researcher at the Lorraine Laboratory of IT Research and its Applications (LORIA) in the CORTEX project.

Working on computational neuroscience models of sensorimotor behaviors and on the continuous neural field theory. More broadly, I'm interested on coordination and prediction based distributed models of cognition.

I've given mathematics and computer science courses at the ENSEEIHT engineering school in 2005-2009 during my PhD, and a course for the cognitive science Master at the University of Nancy 2 this year.

Guillaume Beslon presented a part of his team work dealing with bio-inspired evolutionary models (with indirect selection and genetic structure transformations). His talk included both theoretical thoughts on the need and use of models for the designer (so that he can better refine his hypotheses and interact with other domains representants), as well as totally counter-intuitive but strikingly convincing results on why different kinds of living organizations may have different genetic code characteristics. These two aspects and his eloquence made the talk quite fascinating.

I went to the Cognitive Systems 2010 conference and EuCognitionII 2nd members conference in Zürich. There were a lot of interesting keynotes from well-known European and US researchers, as well as a great deal of European projects presentations. This provided a good synthesis of the ongoing practical work on robotics as well as the key theoretical questions dealt with (from different perspectives). I met again many people involved in enactive, interactive and Piagetian theories, as well as some unexpected guests. I thus had the chance to talk again with Mark Bickhard, Georgi Stojanov, Frank Guerin and many other passionate researchers.

I just moved in Villers-lès-Nancy, in the suburbs of Nancy, in the north-east of France, to start my postdoctorate at the LORIA laboratory. From tomorrow, I will be working on computational neuroscience problems, and more specially on the predictive and temporal aspects of distributed models applied to sensorimotor behaviors.

The EuCognitionII 1st members conference took place in Hamburg. The concept of bringing together a lot of researchers dealing with robotics and cognitive science linked issues to talk about specific topics is great, and I really enjoyed the keynotes and discussions. My only regret has to do with the broad spectrum of perspectives represented, from the bio-inspired understanding of life and cognition to the abstract mathematical frameworks concerned with the creation of cognitive artificial system. This leads to interesting but sometimes fruitless discussions, as people do not in fact study the same subject or ask compatible questions...