Biography

I was born in Toulouse [locals say it this way :-)], France in 1953. I received the Engineer diploma from the Toulouse National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSAT) in 1976 and the Docteur-Engineer and Docteur ès-Sciences degrees from the Toulouse National Polytechnic Institute (INPT) in 1979 and 1990, respectively.

I have been with LAAS-CNRS since 1976, where I currently hold a position of "Directeur de Recherche" at CNRS, the French National Organization for Scientific Research, within the Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance Team, that I have led from January 2003 to January 2008. From 2007 to 2010, I have coordinated the area on Critical Information Systems, one of the four scientific areas then characterizing the research activities carried out at LAAS. I have been Director of the Laboratory during the period 2011-2015. For 2016-20, I have been seconded from CNRS to the MEAE, as Counsellor for Science and Technology leading the Higher Education, Resarch and Innovation (HERI) Department of the French Embassy to the UK.

My main research interests focus on: i) the design and assessment of dependable and secure fault-tolerant computer systems (spanning hardware faults, software faults, and attacks) and ii) the evaluation of the dependability of computing systems architectures and components (e.g., Operating Systems), including both analytical modeling and fault injection approaches. I have authored or co-authored more than 120 papers for international and national journals and conferences and three books.

I have been teaching dependable and fault-tolerant computing in several French Engineering Schools (EM Nancy, EM Nantes, ENAC, ENSEEIHT, ENSEIRB, ENSTB, ISAE) and Universities (Univ. Languedoc Montpellier, UPS Toulouse) and also abroad: PUC Rio de Janeiro (BR), EPFL (CH), Tokyo Inst. of Technology (JP), Univ. of Naples (IT), Univ. Genova (IT), UniCamp (BR).

In 1992, I stayed for 6-month at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (JP), in the framework of a Toshiba Endowed Chair. In 1979-1980, I had spent a post-doctoral year at UCLA (US), supported by an INRIA Research Fellowship.

I have contributed to several European research projects and networks (Delta-4, PDCS, DeVa, CaberNet, GUARDS, DBench, ASSERT, HIDENETS, ReSIST). I have managed several national and international (EU-NSF, CAPES-COFECUB) contracts. From 1997 to 2000, I led the industry-research cooperative laboratory LIS (Laboratory for Dependability Engineering) set between LAAS and five leading companies: Airbus, Astrium, Électricité de France, AREVA TA and Thales. Subsequently, from 2001 to 2004, I have coordinated the activities of RIS (Network for Dependability Engineering) that extended the cooperation started by LIS. I have acted as a consultant for several aerospace, telecommunication and data processing companies in France and in Europe (Ansaldo Segnalemento Ferroviario, ESA/ESTEC, Roche Diagnostics).

I have served on program committees for several major international conferences in the field (FTCS, DSN, EDCC, LADC, PRDC, IOLTS, ETS, ATS, etc.). In 2020, I chaired the Program Committee for the 10th edition of the 3AF/SEE European Congress Embedded Real Time Systems (ERTS-2020). From 1999 to 2005, I have chaired the IFIP Working Group 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance. and as such, I was also the vice-chair of the Steering Committee for the IEEE/IFIP Int. Conf. on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN); from 2006 to 2020, I am involved as member of the Steering Committee. In 2007, I have established the Workshop on Dependable and Secure Nanocomputing held in conjunction with the DSN Conference in Edinburgh (GB); four additional editions took place in the subsequent years: WDSN'08 (Anchorage, AK, US),  WDSN'09 (Estoril, Lisbon, PT), WDSN'10 (Chicago, IL, US) and WDSN'11 (Hong-Kong, CN). In 2004, I chaired the 10th IEEE Int. Symp. Pacific Rim Dependable Computing (Papeete, PF). In 1998, I co-chaired the program committee of the 28th IEEE Int. Symp. on Fault-Tolerant Computing (Munich, DE). Previously, I had chaired the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Fault-Tolerant Computing (1994-95) — now IEEE CS TC on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance. From 2004 to 2008, I was a member of the Editorial Board for the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing ; in particular, I was co-guest editor for the Special Issue (July-Sept. 2006) devoted to a selection of papers from DSN 2005.

In France, since 2011, I am a member of the Working Group on Integrative Research within ALLISTENE (Alliance on Sciences and Technologies for Digital systems) and on the Steering Committee of the Network for Advanced Research on Sciences and Technologies for Aeronautics and Space (RTRA-STAE). During the same period, I was a member of the Scientific Committees for the IRTs Railenium et Antoine de Saint Exupéry. In the past, I had chaired two Scientific Committees: i) Scientific Interest Group on Surveillance, Dependability and Security of Large Scale Systems (3SGS), from 2009 to 2012, ii) Scientific and Technlogical Research Cluster on Modeling, Information and Digital Systems (PRST MISN), from 2011 to 2013. From 2004 to 2011, I co-ordinated a Working Group on Electronics Architecture and Dependability of the Num@tec Automotive initiative within the French Competitivity Cluster System@tic Paris-Region. Before that, from 2002 to 2004, I had chaired the CNRS STIC RTP (Réseau Thématique Pluridisciplinaire) n°21 "Dependability of Open Complex Computerized Systems".

I was a member of the ACM, IEEE, IFIP WGs 10.2 and 10.4, of the French SEE Working Group on Dependable Computing and of the Scientific Board for the 3AF/SEE/SIA Group on Critical Embedded Systems (CISEC). I was awarded the IFIP Silver Core in 2007.