I was born in 1963. I followed an industrial career as an engineer from 1987 till 2002. But my real vocation has always been research in mathematics. For familial reasons, I couldn't do a PhD after my engineering degree. Instead, I wrote and defended a PhD in 1997, besides my working hours, because I had in mind that a day or another, I could become an academic researcher. So, I'm happy without the least regret to have joined Telecom Bretagne (IMT-Atlantique, now) in 2002.

“The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel”
- Claude Bernard -

During my industrial and academic career, I have faced various signal processing applications (electronic warfare, speech, radar, communications, physiological signals). This multiplicity was a true enrichment because it leads me to notice that prior knowledge of the signals encountered in practice is often too poor to justify the use of standard theoretical approaches. Motivated by this basic observation, I have been focusing on optimal statistical signal processing of signals in noise based on the least possible prior knowledge on the signals and their distributions. In this respect, I introduced the following theoretical frameworks that follow one after the other. Currently, my research mainly concerns the Random Distortion Testing (RDT) framework and the mathematical models of resilience, where RDT plays a crucial role.


William of Occam, the model for William of Baskerville, the main character in Umberto Eco's 'The name of the Rose'.
My research is strongly influenced by Occam's razor summarized by ‘Never posit pluralities without necessity’ (‘Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate’). In this respect, I strive to come up
with theoretical framework that resort to the least possible number of hypotheses but encompass the largest number of cases for which we can derive optimal statistical signal processing with guaranteed performance.
Oxyrhynchus papyrus showing fragment of Euclid's Elements, circa AD 75-125
Source: https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/