[Décidément je suis un ignorant ! Je ne sais reconnaître la source de ces senteurs, la nature de ces arbres, pas plus que le sens des traces laissées dans la neige par toute la vie secrète de la forêt. Je ne fais à la nature que de si courtes visites ! Je ne la traverse que comme un évadé furtif et égaré, bientôt repris et captif à nouveau. Imbéciles qui nous terrons dans nos maisons à fouiller les vieux textes laissés par des gens aussi insensés que nous, qui ne sentaient pas mieux le monde ou ne lui donnaient pas le même sens, pour l’illusion de les comprendre. Et nous poussons la porte sur la vivante profusion qui nous assiège. (Paul Cèze, fév. 1951)]
[Nous n’accepterons
pas éternellement que le respect accordé au masque des philosophes*
ne soit finalement profitable qu’au pouvoir des banquiers (Paul
Nizan, « Les chiens de garde », 1932)]
Research
activities
·
System
identification: links between
sequential design of experiments and dual (active) control.
·
Experimental
design and nonlinear regression:
parameter estimation for singular experiments (collaboration with Andrej
Pazman, Comenius University, Bratislava).
·
Semi-parametric
estimation: parameter
estimation in regression models (possibly nonlinear) in the presence of
errors with unknown distribution by minimisation of the entropy of the
residuals.
·
Estimation
of entropy (Shannon, Rényi...)
by nearest-neighbour methods (collaboration with Nikolai Leonenko, Cardiff University).
·
Analysis
of convergence of optimisation algorithms considered as dynamical
systems, in particular
gradient-type algorithms (collaboration with Henry P. Wynn, LSE, and Anatoli A Zhigljavsky, Cardiff University).
· Non-parametric estimation, kriging, design of computer experiments (member of the borad and scintific committee of GdR MASCOT-NUM).
A
fractal in the steepest descent algorithm
Ph.D.
supervisions
Applications, projects and
grants
My activity has
found applications in biomedical engineering (identification problems in
pharmacokinetics), chemical engineering (identification problems in
electrochemistry and heterogeneous catalysis), telecommunications (blind
equalisation), image processing (comparison of dissimilar images,
estimation of movement in sequences of video images), mechanical and
electrical engineering (quality improvement, modelling and
multiobjective optimisation).
I participated to
the european project (CE)2 of the BRITE-EURAM program,
concerning the development of a general purpose tool for multiobjective
optimisation through the use of numerical simulation codes (1996-1999)
and to the projects TITOSIM and ONE, also related to simulation and
optimisation (2001-2004). I have been member of the Network of
Excellence PASCAL
(Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computational Learning). I
supervised a Ph.D. (Régis Bettinger) with Pascal Duchêne from IFP (Institut Français du Pétrole) on an application
of kriging to the construction of catalysts.
I co-supervised with João Rendas (I3S) the Ph.D. of Youssed Bennani (defended in Dec. 2015) on the identification of a biophysical model dedicated to the prevention of decompression accidents, supported by a DGA project (SAFE-DIVE).
I co-supervised with João
Rendas (I3S) the post-doc intertship of Asya Metelkina
(2017-2018) on the individualised modeling of athletic performances in
competition, supported by a contrat with IAAF
(International Association of Athletic Federations), see the papers in Journal
du CNRS and CNRS
News.
I coordinated the ANR project DESIRE (DESIgns for Spatial Random FiElds), joint with the Statistics Departement of JKU Universität, Linz (Au), 2012-2015.
I coordinate the ANR project INDEX (INcremental Design of EXperiments), joint with EdF R&D (Chatou) and the Statistics Departement of JKU Universität, Linz (Au), 2019-2022.
