I graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d'Electricité (1976). I obtained my Ph.D. from the university of Rennes in Information Theory (1979)and my habilitation from the university of Nice in Computer Science (1992). I am a research director at INRIA, the french research institute for the numerical sciences. I am a member of the DataShape team which is located in Saclay (south of Paris) and Sophia Antipolis (south of France).
My research interests are in Computational Geometry and Topology. This includes geometric data structures, Voronoi diagrams, triangulations, randomized algorithms, robust computing, motion planning, mesh generation, non-linear manifold learning, high dimensional geometry, topological data analysis. I have published several books and more than 200 research papers. My book "Algorithmic Geometry", coauthored by Mariette Yvinec, is a reference in the field.
Computational geometry emerged as a new research field in the eighties. I played a pionneering role in shaping the field and led two project teams at INRIA, Prisme (Geometry and Robotics, 1987-2003), which has been the birth place of computational geometry in France, and Geometrica (Geometric Computing, 2003-2015). In 2014, I have been awarded a 5 years advanced grant from the European Research Council to develop the GUDHI project (Geometry Understanding in Higher Dimensions).
20 years ago, I initiated the development of the Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (CGAL) in collaboration with partners in Europe. CGAL has significantly contributed to the influence and impact of computational geometry among the sciences. CGAL is nowadays used worldwide for teaching, research and is at the heart of industrial applications.
My work on geometric modelling, shape reconstruction and mesh generation led to industrial successes with Siemens and Dassault Systèmes, and to patents in the field of medical imaging and surgery (Siemens, Intuitive Surgical) and in geologic modeling (IFP).
I am an associated editor of two leading scientific journals, Journal of the ACM (JACM) and Discrete and Computational Geometry (DCG). I was before on the editorial board of Algorithmica, Journal of Computational Geometry (JCG) and Computational Geometry, Theory and Applications (CGTA). I have been a member of the scientific council of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon, I chaired the evaluation committee of Inria, and have been a member of the council of the AERES (the french agency for the evaluation of research and high level education).
I received the IBM award in Computer Science (1987), the EADS award in Information Sciences (2006) and have, together with my collaborators, been awarded the grand prix ANR du numérique in 2013. I am chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite.
I am a flute player and the founder of Musica Amata.