Education

Ph.D. Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (2003) Northwestern University
M.Sc. Geotechnical Engineering (1999) Northwestern University
M.Sc. Structural Engineering (1998) French Institute of Technology (ESTP)
B.Sc. Mathematics and Physics (1997) Lycée Saint-Louis

Expertise

• Computational mechanics and applied mathematics with an emphasis on moving discontinuities (mechanics of fracture, biofilm and tumour growth, etc.)
• Method development (enriched/extended finite elements, meshfree methods, smooth strain finite elements)
• Evolving discontinuities (level set methods, partition of unity enrichment
• Academic research/industrial applications: bridging the gap (porting novel methods to industrial codes, real-world applications of computational mechanics and novel method development).

Research directions

• Failure of biomorphic and biological materials (multi-scale analysis, micro-macro failure models)
• Industrial applications of enriched finite element and meshfree methods
• a posteriori error estimates (goal-orientation and applications to enriched methods)
• Finite strain plasticity
• Natural element method
• Heart-valve/stent modeling
• Tumour growth modeling
• Biofilm models with fluid-structure interaction, sloughing and anti-bacterial effects

Professional path

Born in Paris, France in 1975, I joined the team of the Civil Engineering department at the University of Glasgow on August 15th 2006, as a Lecturer (assistant professor).

I spent three years at the Laboratory of Structural and Continuum Mechanics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, under the support of Professor Thomas Zimmermann working then on meshfree point collocation methods and partition of unity enrichment (extended finite elements) with applications to geomechanics.

In 2003, I graduated in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University under the guidance of Professor Brian Moran. My thesis, funded by the Federal Aviation Administration, concentrated on applications of the extended finite element method (XFEM) to damage tolerance analysis of complex structures, casting design and biofilm growth processes. In addition to the unique support of Professor Moran, this work would never have been possible without Professor James Conley and Professor David Chopp as well as the instruction of Professor Ted Belytschko.

In 1999, through a joint graduate programme of the French Institute of Technology (Ecole Speciale des Travaux Publics) and the American Northwestern University I complete a dual M.Sc. after a thesis work on Time Domain Reflectometry simulation to assess ground movements with Professor Charles H. Dowding.

Professional activity

• Honorary member of the TECHNET alliance
• Member of the French Structural Mechanics Association
• Reviewer for international journals:
• International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering
• Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering
• Engineering Fracture Mechanics
• Computational Mechanics
• Computers and Structures
• Mathematics and Computers in Simulation
• Advances in Engineering Software

Who am I?

Aside from my work, I am interested in many activities, from chess to skiing, from playing with my two children Iphigenie (17 January 2004) and Augustin (24 January 2006), reading and writing novels and short stories, but above all, practicing arts (Shotokan Karate, piano and choir singing) and all sports I can get my muscles/head into (squash, volleyball, basketball, badminton, racketball, swimming, chess, hill-walking, trecking...).