Having completed a thesis in physics at the University of Grenoble, a post doctorate at Bell Labs in the US and 20 years at the French National Centre for Telecommunications Studies, he became a professor at EPFL (Lausanne) in 1993. He is an expert in ultrafast spectroscopy of semiconductors. He went on to direct the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Electronics and the National Centre of Competence in Quantum Photonics Research, before being named dean of research at EPFL in 2008.
