Applying for a PhD position

Doing a PhD in my group

I take on average one or two PhD students every year. I am always open to outstanding candidates (= among the very best of the most selective master) who are passionate about research. While I primarily recruit in the French engineering schools system, I am also open to foreign students. I always have funding, the limiting resource is my bandwidth.

You can do two kinds of PhD with me.

  • A purely academic PhD. I have funding for purely academic topics. My current interest focus on combinatorial optimization augmented machine learning, decision aware learning, and data driven optimization. While I have several ideas of topics, I tailor them with the PhD student. Maximum freedom guaranteed !

  • An academic-industrial PhD. I love industrial applications and start almost every year a CIFRE (or equivalent) PhD with long term industrial partners. I am open to seeking new industrial partner for outstanding students with specific project. However, I want to write the PhD topic with the partner. I always say no to students who come with an industrial partner and a topic already written. Full scale industrial application guaranteed, as well as a lot of academic freedom (I refuse industrial partnerships that do not let enough freedom the to PhD students) !

Applying for a PhD

Before applying, please inform yourself on what we do and how we work:

  • spend time reading the research part of this website,
  • read a few publications
  • if you are attending one of my lecture, come discussing at the pause of the next session

If you are even more motivated after this, then send an application with the following items

  • motivation letter (customized for my research)
  • curriculum vitae
  • transcript of records
  • your ranking at the KIRO (École des Ponts’ hackathon) if you participated
  • writing sample (ideally your master thesis or an internship report containing maths)
  • coding sample (optional but important for topics related to the industry)
  • reference letter.

I receive many PhD applications and try to respond to all of them. If you do not receive a reply within two weeks after reaching out, I apologize for the impoliteness, but it is unlikely that you receive a positive response afterwards. I will not reply to incomplete applications.

Interview

If you make it to an interview, be aware that I will test you extensively on the skills needed for a PhD.

  • Come with slides of a previous internship in applied mathematics, I may ask you a 15 minutes presentation.
  • I might ask you to read a paper beforehand and explain it to me live.
  • I will also ask you a research question related to the PhD topic, and spend time working with you on it.

For students coming from the French system, it will look like a kholle.

After the interview

In case I give a positive response after the interview, I strongly encourage you to call some of my PhD students, to have feedbacks on how it is to work with me. Selecting your PhD advisor (and more generally your first boss) is of utmost importance, and depending on your character, you might or might not like my style.