Research experience

Reviewer for scientific journals

I reviewed articles for the following journals, conferences and websites (in alphabetical order):

Neuroscience modeling

Biochemical modeling

I modeled different biochemical processes at various physical scales: from calcium reaction/diffusion in a single spine to rhythmic networks of a hundred neurons. The work that attracted most attention from the scientific community involved a 1600-compartments model of the Purkinje cell (PC), for which I demonstrated the plurality of parameter sets that can precisely reproduce the experimental activity.

Software development

Together with W. Van Geit, graduate student in E. De Schutter's lab, I have built a full software package to automate parameter tuning: Neurofitter. This software is receiving a very good welcome from the computational neuroscience community. It is now part of the software studied in the "Modeling and Identifying Neural Systems" lecture at Johns Hopkins University.

Particle physics activities

Data analysis

My initial training led me to a PhD in experimental particle physics in the European laboratory CERN, on the world largest electron-positron collider. Our experimental team was the fruit of an international collaboration involving more than 50 institutes. My dissertation dealt with statistical data analysis of two-photon collision events leading to the inclusive production of hadrons. It was, therefore, a test for the quantum chromodynamics theory, and some of my observations remain unexplained in the current Standard Model.

Particle physics hardware maintenance

During thenormal functioning of the accelerator, the rate of electron packet crossings at the center of the detectors far exceeds the recording capacities of any existing system, both in speed and volume. Therefore, detectors can not work without an on-line and very rapid selection of the crossings that carry interesting physics events. This task is performed by several pieces of hardware called "triggers". Inside the L3 experiment, my responsibilities included the maintenance of the wire chamber trigger (outer-TEC trigger) for which I have been on-call expert for several weeks of data taking.

I also participated in the 24 hours a day and 7 days a week recording of data. I shared the responsibility of the electromagnetic calorimeter monitoring and of the run control.