Bio
Professor of Physics at Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, Laboratoire Hubert Curien (UMR CNRS 5516), where I head the Optics, Photonics and Surfaces department.
My work explores how energy cascades and entropy flows through a solid irradiated by a femtosecond laser pulse, and how these ultrafast processes sculpt the surface within the first few picoseconds.
This work naturally demands a multiphysics and multiscale approach to capture the full complexity of the phenomena. No single description carries the problem from the photoexcited electronic structure to the final relief, so we develop several and make them talk to each other: ab initio calculations of the excited state, electromagnetic simulations of absorption on real rough surfaces, atomistic and continuum descriptions of the thermomechanical response, and more recently machine learning to navigate a parameter space that is too large to scan. Each level supplies the coefficients the next one needs, which is also where most of the difficulty lies.
I trained at the ENS de Lyon, did my doctorate at the French Atomic Energy Commission on the theory of ultrashort laser interaction with metals, and spent a postdoctoral year at Paris Observatory on radiative hydrodynamics experiments driven by large lasers. I joined Université Jean Monnet as associate professor in 2007 with the task of developing a modelling approach to ultrafast laser-matter interaction, and became full professor in 2017.
Alongside research I led the physics department of the Faculty of Sciences for 5 years, and I am currently the Course Director of the iPSRS Master program. I continuously coordinate nationally and internationally funded research projects on laser processing and photonics. I have supervised fifteen doctoral students and seven postdoctoral researchers. I teach waves physics, nanophotonics modelling, numerical methods, photon-atom coupling, and special relativity.
Paul Langevin Prize, French Physical Society, 2023. Awarded for work on the theory and modelling of ultrafast laser-matter interaction.
Positions
- since 2026Head of the Optics, Photonics and Surfaces department
Laboratoire Hubert Curien, about 45 researchers across 4 research teams - since 2018Scientific leader, Axis 1
EUR Manutech SLEIGHT graduate school - 2019 – 2024Head of the Physics department
Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, Saint-Etienne - since 2017Professor
Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, FST, Lab Hubert Curien - 2011 – 2019Coordinator of the Hierarchical Surfaces axis
Labex Manutech-SISE, Univ Lyon - 2007 – 2017Associate professor
Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, Telecom Saint-Etienne, Lab Hubert Curien - 2014Habilitation to supervise research
Electronic excitation and relaxation of materials under ultrashort laser irradiation - 2006 – 2007Postdoctoral researcher
Paris Observatory, radiative hydrodynamics on large laser facilities - 2005 – 2006Assistant professor
Université Jean Monnet, IUT, Lab Hubert Curien - 2002 – 2005Doctorate
French Atomic Energy Commission, Theory and simulation of ultrashort laser interaction with metallic solids
See the research themes and the publication list.
Profiles: ORCID · Google Scholar · ResearchGate
