Digital science and technology honoured at the Académie des Sciences

The Académie des Sciences, founded in 1666, brings together the most brilliant scientific minds to promote science and advise public decision-makers. Members of the Academy are elected for life, following a rigorous, multi-stage election process spanning almost a year, whose result is ratified by an official decree of the President of the Republic.

This year, Anne Canteaut (COSMIQ project-team), Pierre Rouchon (QUANTIC joint project-team : ENS, Inria, Mines, Sorbonne University), Gérard Biau (MEGAVOLT exploratory action) and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (EX-SITU joint project-team) join the ranks of the Académie des Sciences. This election recognises their outstanding careers and research that have made their mark on their respective fields.

On Wednesday 18 December 2024, the Académie des Sciences announced their election to posts on specific themes: 

• Gérard Biau for the “Measuring, Modelling, and Predicting” theme.
• Anne Canteaut, Pierre Rouchon and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon for the “Computer and Information Sciences” theme.

We extend our sincere congratulations to our colleagues for this distinction and wish them all the best in their future scientific contributions! Read their biographies...

© Laurent Ardhuin

Michel Beaudouin-Lafon is a professor of Computer Science at Université Paris-Saclay and a researcher within the Inria Ex-Situ (Extreme Situated Interaction) joint project team involving the LISN Laboratory, of which he is deputy director. As a specialist in human-computer interaction (HCI), he explores new forms of interaction adapted to human skills and characteristics. Michel Beaudouin-Lafon’s illustrious career has been marked by numerous achievements.

He is the author or co-author of at least 220 publications and has also supervised more than 35 theses. He is a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, a winner of the CNRS silver medal, and has been honoured by numerous international institutions. As an active member of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), where he currently heads the ACM Europe Technology Policy Committee, he received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award in 2015 and was named an ACM Fellow in 2022 for his major contributions. Michel Beaudouin-Lafon is an ERC Advanced Grant and Proof-of-Concept project winner. Reflecting his strong commitment to teaching, he founded and jointly led two International Master’s programmes in Human-Computer Interaction. At national level, he is the director of the CONTINUUM research facility and co-director of the eNSEMBLE priority exploratory research programme (PEPR) on digital collaboration. His internationally acclaimed work is transforming the way we interact with digital environments. 

Gérard Biau is a graduate of the École des Mines de Paris and holds an agrégation in mathematics. He was awarded a doctorate by the University of Montpellier in 2000. Gérard Biau began his career as a lecturer at Sorbonne University, where he taught from 2001 to 2004. After successfully defending his “Habilitation” (Habilitation à diriger des recherches – HDR) thesis, he was appointed professor at the University of Montpellier. In 2007, he joined the Probability, Statistics and Modelling Laboratory at Sorbonne University. He is currently the director and a founding member of  the Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) at Sorbonne University.

Gérard Biau's research focuses on analysing the statistical dynamics at work in modern artificial intelligence algorithms. His recent contributions examine the convergence between physical modelling and machine learning, with a view to exploiting their combined potential. Gérard Biau was a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France from 2012 to 2017 and president of the Société Française de Statistique from 2015 to 2018. In 2018, he won the Michel Monpetit - Inria Prize, awarded by the French Academy of Sciences. Since 2024, he has been a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

© Inria/Lucile Moreno

After a PhD in Computer Science under the supervision of Paul Camion, and a postdoctoral fellowship in Jim Massey's team at ETH Zurich, Anne Canteaut joined Inria in 1998. She is currently a senior researcher in the Cosmiq (Code-Based Cryptology, Symmetric Cryptology and Quantum Information) project team at the Inria Paris Centre.

Anne Canteaut is a cryptography specialist. She focuses on both the design of new cryptographic algorithms, notably to protect data confidentiality, and the analysis of the security of existing systems. Her research is at the interface between cryptography, algorithms and discrete mathematics. She was the Inria Paris Centre’s scientific delegate from 2017 to 2019, and chaired Inria’s Evaluation Commission from 2019 to 2023. Anne Canteaut was awarded the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize for “Woman Scientist of the Year” in 2023, and was made a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research in 2024. She is also involved in a number of initiatives to promote gender diversity as well as diversity in research studies and topics.

Pierre Rouchon is a professor at the Systems and Control Centre (Centre automatique et systèmes – CAS) at the École des Mines de Paris, PSL University. Since 2015, he has been a member of the Quantic (QUANTum Information Circuits: ENS/Inria/Mines/Sorbonne University) joint project team with Inria and the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. Pierre Rouchon graduated from the École Polytechnique (X80) and joined the Corps des Mines where he defended a thesis in process engineering on the dynamics and control of separation units. He successfully defended his Habilitation thesis (HDR) at Université Paris-Sud in 2000. From 1993 to 2005, he was a lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the École Polytechnique. He was head of the Systems and Control Centre from 1997 to 2002 and then head of the Mathematics and Systems Department at the École des Mines de Paris from 2007 to 2018. In 2017, he was awarded the IMT-Académie des Sciences Grand Prize. Since 2021, Pierre Rouchon has been leading the ERC Advanced Grant “Quantum Feedback Engineering” project. He is a Commander of the Palmes Académiques (2023).

Pierre Rouchon is known for his work on control theory and its applications to industrial and experimental systems. He introduced and developed the theory of differentially flat systems, which are frequently encountered in practical situations and whose trajectories can be planned and tracked using explicit solutions of low complexity. He introduced the notion of invariant asymptotic observers, on which the invariant Kalman filter is based, with major applications in navigation and robotics. He contributed to the development of the real-time algorithm used by a team led by Serge Haroche, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics, for the first experimental realisation of a quantum feedback loop controlling photons in 2011. Since then, his work within the Quantic team has focused on mathematical and numerical methods for modelling and controlling quantum systems with decoherence and measurements. These mathematical and numerical methods are inspired by the scientific questions underlying quantum technologies.