I am currently the Director of the Physics Division, at the CNRS Institute of Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN) in Lille, and Distinguished Professor at the Department of Physics, University of Lille.

I obtained the title of Doctor in Physics cum laude from the University of Perugia (Italy) in 1984, and the Habilitation in Physics (HDR) from the University “Louis Pasteur” of Strasbourg in 2005.

I spent the first part of my scientific career in ENEA, Rome (Italy), where I worked on nuclear reactor physics, and science of irradiated materials.

Between 1994-98 I was firstly at the MIT in Boston, and then at the University of Chicago (USA), with the Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, working on the mechanics and thermal properties of materials at the nanoscale.

I first landed in Lille with an “International Research Chair” by the Région Nord-Pas de Calais in 2006. After becoming professor in the Physics department, I progressively turned my research interest to molecular physics and biophysics. In 2010 I created the Master School in Biophysics and Medical Physics, officially recognized by the French Government (Ministère de la Santé), for which I am still the acting Director.

I was an Editor of “Applied Physics Letters” for 8 years (two terms) until March 2016; since 2012 I am on the editorial board of the European Physical Journal E: Soft Matter and Biological Physics, and in 2018 I also joined the team of Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology.

A recognized expert in statistical mechanics theory and molecular simulation, I am the author or co-author of more than 150 scientific papers, book chapters, and Conference proceedings, and gave more than 50 invited talks in national and international Conferences (see GoogleScholar).

I was a visiting scientist in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at MIT, in Boston (1993); visiting scientist at the Materials Science Department, Argonne National Laboratory, in Chicago (1995-98); invited professor at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Santa Barbara (1997-98); invited professor at the Materials Engineering Department of the Rensselaer Polytechnic in Troy, New York (2003); and visiting professor at the Institute of Industrial Sciences of the Tokyo University, for several terms between 2007 and now.