Catherine Bréchignac
Nanoscience Physicist
Ambassador Delegate for Science, Technology and Innovation, former Director General and then President of the CNRS, Catherine Bréchignac is Honorary Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. It is in her deep convictions to maintain a balance between her various activities: purely scientific research activity as a nanosciences physicist, activity as a scientific manager as Director General then President of the CNRS, activity in scientific diplomacy as Ambassador. In spite of the important scientific responsibilities she has assumed, she has always been able to keep a scientific activity in the laboratory, then in writing books on the scientific approach, in order to explain how science is built and how scientific thought develops over the years. It is this passion for science, to defend and promote it in France and internationally, that led successive governments to appoint Catherine Bréchignac and then to confirm her as Delegate Ambassador for Science, Technology and Innovation. The author of numerous books and recipient of numerous awards, she was raised to the rank of Grand Officer in the Order of the Legion of Honor.
Claire Mathieu
Algorithms researcher
Currently a research director in Computer Science at CNRS (Paris University) and member of the French Academy of Sciences, Claire Mathieu has worked as a CNRS researcher at ENS-Lyon and as a professor in various institutions: Collège de France, École normale supérieure ("attached" professor), Paris-Sud University, École polytechnique, Brown University (USA). Her research area concerns algorithms, with a focus on the design of algorithms to find near-optimal solutions to problems that are hard to solve exactly. Recently, she has been interested in modeling social networks, analyzing stable marriage algorithms, reconstructing hidden graphs, and epidemic simulation. She was awarded the CNRS Silver medal (2019).
François Forget
Astrophysicist
François Forget is research scientist involved in space exploration, observations analysis, instrument development and modelling of the environment on other worlds like Mars, Pluto, extra-solar planets, Venus, Titan, Triton, etc. In particular, his team develop numerical Climate Models designed to accurately simulate the environment on other planets. His research is primarily focused on the development of Global Climate Models (GCM) designed to accurately simulate the environment on other planets. The scientific applications are countless. On this basis, he is also deeply involved in space exploration, observations analysis, and space instrumentationFrançois Forget is Deputy Director of the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD), Paris, France. (~200 scientists and engineers) and senior Research scientist CNRS at Institut Pierre Simon Laplace
Gérard Berry
Professor and Writer
Gérard Berry is a French computer scientist, member of French Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences), French Academy of Technologies (Académie des technologies), and Academia Europaea. He was the Chief Scientist Officer of Esterel Technologies from 2000 to 2009. He held the 2007-2008 yearly Liliane Bettencourt chair of Technological Innovation at the Collège de France. He is currently Director of Research at INRIA and is holding the 2009-2010 yearly Informatics and Digital Sciences chair at the Collège de France. Berry's work, which spans over more than 30 years, brought important contributions to three main fields: lambda calculus and functional programming, parallel and real-time programming languages, design automation for synchronous digital circuits. Berry is known for the Esterel programming language.
Gilles Dawidowicz
Geographer
Gilles Dawidowicz is a geographer (Sorbonne University), specialized in planetary sciences. He has been campaigning since the 90s for a robotic exploration of the solar system bodies and is promoting the exploration of Mars. Former member of the Mars Society and its French chapter the Association Planète Mars, he has been president of the Triel Observatory for 5 years and has for many years chaired the Planetary Committee of the Société astronomique de France, of which he is the Secretary General since June 2018. Gilles is also co-author of popular works on Mars, Saturn and Northern lights. He regularly hosts major public meetings at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (Paris) covering international space news.
Leïla Schneps
Mathematician
Leila Schneps received her B.A. at Harvard University in 1983, and then moved to France to pursue her Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Paris, where she later became a researcher at the French Center for Scientific Research. Although her main area is pure mathematics, she became interested some years ago in the way in which mathematics is used in criminal trials and medical diagnostics, two areas in which a close examination raised major concerns about serious errors being made due to misunderstandings and misuses of probabilities. Together with Coralie Colmez, she published a book called Math on Trial (Basic Books, 2013) detailing 12 cases of mathematical errors leading to miscarriages of justice from the end of the 19th century to today. Since then, she has become involved in working with the French police on efforts to bring Bayesian networks and artificial intelligence into the crime investigation community, and also in publicizing the problems with the current medical practice of rigidly diagnosing shaken baby syndrome in the presence of certain symptoms based on a faulty understanding of the results of certain statistical studies, leading to the arrest of parents and the breaking up of families.
Patrick Touron
Commander of the National Gendarmerie's Judicial Division
Patrick Touron is General of the Gendarmerie, Commander of the Judicial Pole of the National Gendarmerie (PJGN) and former Director of the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie (IRCGN) until 2018. Graduate of the Lausanne School of Criminal Sciences (ESC) and former student of the Collège Interarmées de Défense (CID) promotion 2004. Expert in criminal investigations, specialising in the field of explosives and victim identification during mass disasters. In this capacity, he has been practicing forensic expertise in sensitive cases since the 1990s and has written numerous scientific articles in the field of forensic science. He has alternated positions within the Scientific Gendarmerie with operational command posts in the field, the most recent of which was that of Commander of the Bas-Rhin Departmental Gendarmerie until 2012. Patrick Touron is a former auditor at the Institut des Hautes Etudes pour la Science et la Technologie (IHEST promotion "Leonardo da Vinci" 2012-2013).
Ugo Bellagamba
Author and teacher-researcher
Ugo Bellagamba is a writer and teacher-researcher in the history of law and political ideas, based at Université Côte d'Azur. He works mainly on cultural representations of law and justice in utopias and science fiction. As an author, he has published several uchronies, including Tancrède, a novel revisiting the First Crusade, for which he received several awards. He is also the organizer of the next national science fiction convention in Valbonne.
Héloïse Brezillon
Doctoral student - Artistic creation
Héloïse Brezillon is a phd student in creative writing, a poetess and a science-fiction writer. Regarding theory, she's studying what she calls "sound science-fiction", an emerging genre combining imaginary literature and sound experimentations. As for her creative writing practice, it is full of obsessions : the body as a territory, feminine intimacy, how we deal with our ecosystems and power. Her approach is both stamped by her political radicality and her sensitivity about the flesh and the world. She also gives creative writing workshops at universities, schools and differents social structures, because she believes that it's possible to generate poetry and imagination in everybody.
Louise Marc
PhD student in medical physics
Louise Marc is a PhD-candidate at the University hospital of Zurich in the department of Medical Physics, more concretely in cancer treatment by radiotherapy. During her Bachelor studies in Physics at Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany), an exchange year at École Centrale Paris followed by a Master in Applied Physics at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), she could get in touch with different domains at the interface between physics and medicine. Determined to improve and innovate in the health field with a physicist's approach, she is interested in interdisciplinary questions. Her current research is about how to improve the conventional radiotherapy, i.e. photontherapy, in terms of precision through the use of protons. The so-called proton therapy is more costly but generally much more precise. Thus, it potentially represents in combination with the use of photons, a general improvement for radiotherapy in clinics. Louise is passionated about music, and lives her passion particularly by playing the piano since her childhood.
Manuel Gaulhiac
PhD student in musicology
Manuel Gaulhiac is a PhD student in musicology at Sorbonne-Université in Paris. He works on harmonic descriptors and acoustic modeling of harmonic phenomena. He graduated from the École Polytechnique in fundamental mathematics, and obtained the master Atiam (Acoustics, Signal Processing and Computer Science Applied to Music) of the Ircam (a French institute of research in musicology and acoustics) as well as the master in musicology of the Sorbonne, which he devoted to the music of Alfred Schnittke. Manuel Gaulhiac is also a pianist and a music critic for the Bachtrack website.
Marie Lacomme
PhD in Philosophy of Science
Marie Lacomme is a doctoral student in philosophy of science at Sphere laboratory (University of Paris). She holds a master's degree in philosophy from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University. She also studied evolutionary biology at UPMC and MNHN, as well as completed research internships in primatology (MNHN). Her research focuses on the place given to human beings in relation to other animal species, especially other primate species, both in natural sciences and in social sciences.
Teddy Butscher
Student - ISAE-SUPAERO
After completing a Master in theoretical chemistry and spectroscopies, Teddy Butscher pursued a PhD in astrochemistry at Aix-Marseille University in the ASTRO team of the PIIM laboratory. His research work dealt with multiple disciplines (from organic chemistry to biochemistry and astrochemistry) while holding a common point. Whether it is to create new radical species for theranostic uses or to detect intermediates in interstellar ices, spectroscopies (such as infrared or electronic paramagnetic resonance) are of prime importance. Teddy also participated in teaching physical chemistry and in scientific dissemination, especially in exobiology.
Valentin Baillard
PhD student in probability
During his studies at École Centrale Paris (now called CentraleSupélec), Valentin pursued a 3-year research project in plasma physics applied to future low-carbon technologies and joined the LIGO collaboration for 6 months. Now a graduate, he is moving towards more abstract research in fundamental mathematics and is currently in his first year of a PhD in Probability at the University of Paris-Sud and the CEA of Paris-Saclay. His subject is the study of the spectral properties of a certain type of random matrices, which are of interest both to mathematicians and theoretical physicists, but also ultimately to the machine learning or telecommunications industry. Passionate about science, in 2018 he coordinated the organization of a large-scale student scientific symposium (the first edition of the CentraleSupélec Scientific Symposium), and during his doctorate he leads scientific workshops for primary and secondary school students at the Maison d'Initiation et de Sensibilisation aux Sciences (MISS) in Paris-Saclay. Today his interest lies in the democratizing critical thinking and a philosophical approach to our relationship to knowledge.
Gautier Depambour
PhD student in science's history
Former student of the French engineering school CentraleSupélec, Gautier Depambour is currently studying History and Philosophy of Science at Paris VII University. During his gap year, he had the opportunity to work as an intern for five months at CERN within the communication group of the ATLAS detector. Meanwhile, he has lead a Machine Learning project on particle physics. He has also spent six months in the Quantum Cavity Electrodynamics group in the Kastler-Brossel Laboratory (Collège de France, Paris) for his Masters degree in nanophysics. Finally, he feels passionate about explaining and helping others understand science. He is involved in several projects such as the website of the French physicist and philosopher Etienne Klein. He also wrote a book to tell his experience at CERN, called Une Journée au CERN.
Norbert Gautrin
Emergency doctor
Norbert Gautrin was introduced to emergency care in 1969 in Professor Huguenard's intensive care unit when the SAMU du Val de Marne was created. He served as Secretary General of Médecins Sans Frontières for 9 years. He took part in several exploratory missions (in Kurdistan in 1980, in Iran in 1981, in Zaire in 1983 in relation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and in Ethiopia in 1984). In 1986 Norbert Gautrin co-founded a company that was at the origin of thirteen EHPADs and a home care service. In 1993, he was a doctor in Dr Xavier Emmanuelli's team at the creation of the Samu Social de Paris. Since 1980, Norbert Gautrin has been working at SOS médecin Paris. He is also an administrator for the Samu Social International and for the philanthropic society which manages Ehpad, establishments for children with physical and mental disabilities, and shelters for women in great difficulty.
Patrick Assyag
Cardiologist
Patrick Assyag has been a private cardiologist in Paris since 1997. He is a former head of clinic and assistant at the Strasbourg hospitals. He is currently President of the Union of Cardiologists of Paris and its region, President of the Association of Cardiology Ile-de-France, Vice-President of the National Union of Specialists in Heart and Vascular Diseases (SNSMCV), Vice-President of the French Federation of Cardiology, member of the French Society of Cardiology and member of the European Society of Cardiology.
Thierry Harvey
Obstetrician
Thierry Harvey is an obstetrician gynecologist. He has been head of maternity ward for the Diaconesses hospital of Paris for almost 25 years. He currently chairs Solipam (Solidarité Paris maman), an association and network dealing with pregnant women in a highly precarious situation in Paris region. Thierry is particularly involved into defense of women, right to voluntary abortion and medical help with conception. Well-being and human respect are his main concerns.
Thomas Jontza
Psychiatrist
II did my training in psychiatry and psychotherapy with special interest in psychoanalysis in the PLK Weissenau, the university hospital of the Universitaet Ulm in Germany. I was lucky to establish myself in the profession during a time of new therapeutic possibilities, a situation for which I was and remain very grateful to my teachers and colleagues. I also work today in couple therapy, having been trained by C. Gammer in family therapy. Under the guidance of Prof. Hole, I have taught hypnosis to students (medical doctors) of psychotherapy in Germany, later in Zurich, at the Psychiatric University Hospital Burghoelzli. For some years, I have been working in Paris as a practitioner in my private office; in addictologyI am attached to the HEGP/AP-HP. When treating my psychiatric and psychotherapeutic patients, I also include behavioural therapy (e.g. DBT, Scheme Therapy).
Xavier Emmanuelli
Emergency doctor
Xavier Emmanuelli graduated as a doctor of merchant medicine and joined the maritime courier. Then he became a general practitioner at the Coal Basin of the Freyming-Merlebach Mines. At the same time, he became part of the founding team of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), with a desire to create an international emergency relief effort. In parallel, from 1972 to 1975, he was the assistant to Professor Pierre Huguenard for the creation and development of SAMU 94, one of the first Emergency Medical Aid Services. As an anesthesiologist and reanimator. From 1992 to 1995 Xavier Emmanuelli was a hospital practitioner at the Care and Accommodation Center at the Nanterre hospital. He described a new clinical approach to social exclusion observed during consultations with the homeless. He then imagined a social SAMU like the medical SAMU in order to take charge of people in situations of exclusion. From 1995 to 1997, he was appointed Secretary of State for Emergency Humanitarian Action by President Jacques Chirac. In 1998, he also founded the Samusocial International, in order to address the high levels of exclusion amongst homeless people in big cities of the world.
Gérard Lambert
Doctor, science journalist, essayist
A medical doctor, he created an SOS Médecins branch in Yvelines in 1985 with, for 8 years, a medical emergency practice in town and management responsibilities for the structure. From 1992 he became a journalist in the specialised medical press and published numerous articles in the general public press. Today he is the editorial director of LEN Médical, responsible for the seminar at the Centre Cavaillès (ENS, Paris), administrator and collection director at the Matériologiques publishing house. He has published La légende des gènes, Anatomie d'un mythe moderne (Dunod 2003 ); Vérole, Cancer & Cie, La société des maladies (Le Seuil 2009) and has edited several collective works. For more than 10 years he has been hosting interactive online programs for general practitioners and specialists.
Anne Duprat
Professor and Writer
Anne Duprat is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Picardie Jules Verne, essayist and translator. She is director of the CERCLL (EA4283) and Senior Member of the IUF. Specialist in fiction theory and European literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, she is notably the author of Vraisemblances. Poétiques de la fiction en France et en Italie (Champion, 2009), Fiction et cultures (dir., with F. Lavocat, Paris, 2010), Histoires et savoirs. Anecdotes scientifiques aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles (dir., with F. Aït-Touati, Peter Lang, 2012) and Romanesques noirs 1750-1850 (dir., with L. Ruiz and M. Hersant, Garnier, 2019). She is currently leading the ALEA project ("Figurations/Configurations artificielles du hasard"), funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR-19-CE27-0006).
Laurent Thirouin
Professor of French Literature
A former student of the École Normale Supérieure, Laurent Thirouin is Professor Emeritus of 17th century French literature at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 and is the author of various works on Pascal's work (Le Hasard et les règles. Le modèle du jeu dans la pensée de Pascal, 1991, reprinted 2011; Pensées sur la justice, La Découverte, 2011; Le Défaut de la méthode. Lecture des Pensées selon leur ordre, Champion, 2015; Lectures russes de Pascal, hier et aujourd'hui, ed. by F. Lesourd and L. Thirouin, Garnier, 2020) and the intellectual life in the Port-Royal milieu: the moral work of Pierre Nicole (Pierre Nicole, Essais de morale, reedition, revue et corrigée, Les Belles Lettres, coll. "Encre marine, 2016; Traité de la Comédie et autres pièces d'un procès du théâtre, Champion, 1998), the quarrel of the theater (L'Aveuglement salutaire. Le réquisitoire contre le théâtre dans la France classique, H. Champion, 1997, reprinted 2007), Augustinism in the 17th century (Les Écoles de pensée religieuse à l'époque moderne, texts compiled by Y. Krumenacker and L. Thirouin, Lyon, RESEA, 2006).
Olivier Caïra
Sociologist and essayist
Olivier Caïra is a lecturer in sociology at the IUT of Évry (University Paris-Saclay). He conducts his research at the Centre Pierre Naville (Évry) and at CRAL (EHESS Paris) on the experiences of fiction, interactive scriptwriting and leisure industries. His main publications are : Hollywood face à la censure (CNRS Éditions 2005), Jeux de rôle : les forges de la fiction (CNRS Éditions 2007), Définir la fiction (Éditions de l'EHESS 2011), Le Cerveau comme machine (Georg 2020) and Le Goof au cinéma (L'Harmattan 2020, with Réjane Hamus-Vallée). He is also an author of role-playing and board games.
Etienne Klein
Physicist ane philosopher
Étienne Klein is a French physicist and philosopher of science. A graduate of École Centrale Paris, he holds a DEA (Master of Advanced Studies) in theoretical physics, as well as a Ph.D. in philosophy of science and an accreditation to supervise research (HDR). He is currently head of the Laboratoire des Recherches sur les Sciences de la Matière (LARSIM), a research laboratory belonging to the CEA and located in Saclay near Paris. He taught quantum physics and particle physics at Centrale Paris for several years and currently teaches philosophy of science. He is a specialist in the question of time in physics and has written a number of essays on the subject. He presents a radio chronicle La Conversation scientifique every Saturday, on the French public station France Culture. Étienne Klein is the author of many books. He practises mountain-climbing and other endurance sports.
Bernard Legras
Geoscience Researcher
Bernard Legras is a CNRS research director and works at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in the Dynamic Meteorology Laboratory. During his career he has been interested in many aspects of the dynamics and physics of the atmosphere. He has worked on topics as varied as the ozone hole, weather patterns, climate change, atmospheric and oceanic eddies, stratospheric circulation, the Asian monsoon and its impact. He has recently done work on the impact of volcanic eruptions and large forest fires and found that these generate spectacular ash eddies that persist for several months. He has published more than 100 scientific articles, collaborated with foreign scientists in Asia, Europe and America, mentored many students, chaired a section of the National Committee and was the scientific head of the National Atmospheric Data Centre.
Gilles Ramstein
Paleoclimatologist
Gilles Ramstein is a CEA research director at the LSCE (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement). He is a paleoclimatologist, specialized in climate modeling, biogeochemical cycles and their interactions. He is the author of several books including "Voyage travers les climats de la Terre" (Odile Jacob, 2015) and the book co-written with Sylvestre Huet "Le climat en 100 questions" (Tallandier, 2020).
Hervé Le Treut
Climatologist
Hervé Le Treut is a climatologist, specialist in numerical climate simulation. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and former director of the Pierre-Simon-Laplace Institute. Hervé is a professor of environmental mechanics and physics at the École polytechnique and Pierre and Marie Curie University. He also teaches climate dynamics at the École normale supérieure and at Sciences Po.
Jean-Louis Dufresne
Climate Physicist
Jean-Louis Dufresne is a climate physicist and his research activities focus on climate change and climate modelling. He studies in particular radiation exchanges in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect, climatic variations and feedbacks from the climate system. He coordinated the development of the IPSL climate model for several years and participated in the latest work of the IPCC. He is a CNRS research director and works at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) and the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL).
Juliette Mignot
Oceanographer
Juliette Mignot is a researcher in oceanography at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, specializing in climate variations on time scales of the order of 10 to 50 years, and their predictability. She is particularly interested in the origin of these modulations in the North Atlantic basin and their impact on adjacent continents, particularly Europe and the Sahel. As such, she actively collaborates with several Senegalese universities where she supervises students and coordinates research projects. She works mainly with numerical climate models and carries out climate prediction experiments on decadal time scales.
Marie-Antoinette Mélières
Physicist and climatologist
Marie-Antoinette Mélières obtained a PhD in Physical Chemistry and a State Doctorate in Physics at the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble (currently Grenoble-Alpes). She has carried out research in the fields of molecular spectroscopy, atmospheric physics, but also in the field of environmental sciences (mercury, radioelement and aerosol cycles) and climate (studies focused on sedimentary archives). She has taught at the University of Grenoble-Alpes in fundamental physics and then in climate sciences. She was scientific manager of the CNRS Saga-Science Climat site from 1999 to 2007. She initiated and wrote the Lettre Changement Global under the aegis of the Ministry of Research and the Academy of Sciences (1994-2008).
Pascal Yiou
Climatology Researcher
Pascal Yiou holds a PhD in applied mathematics and is a research director at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement. His current research focuses on the modelling of extreme events, chaotic systems and statistics. In 2014, he was awarded the ERC (European Research Council) prize for his work on the statistical properties of chaotic climate systems.
Sylvestre Huet
Journalist
Sylvestre Huet has been a journalist specializing in science since 1986. He has worked for many newspapers including Libération and Le Monde. Today independent, he runs the blog {Sciences²} for Lemonde.fr (https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/huet/). Diderot-Curien prize (2012), Union Rationaliste prize (2015), Académie d'agriculture 2019 prize for scientific information for the general public). Author of several books including : Quel climat pour demain (2000 Calmann-Lévy), L'imposteur, c'est lui : réponse à Claude Allègre, Stock, 2010; Changement climatique : les savoirs et les possibles (with Hervé Le Treut, Olivier Godard and Jérôme Chapellaz), La ville brûle, 2010; Les dessous de la cacophonie climatique, La ville brûle, 2015; Le Climat en 100 questions (with Gilles Ramstein, Tallandier, 2020).