My research activity centers on the study of nuclear matter, specifically near phase transitions.

During my D.E.A and during my thesis, it was the liquid-gaz phase transition at bombarding energies below the pion production threshold (roughly 300A MeV). I studied the nuclear matter formed by heavy-ion collisions using hard photons and/or neutral mesons (pion and eta), detected by the Two Arms Photon Spectrometer (TAPS). TAPS is a modular electromagnetic calorimeter of about 400 BaF2 crystals, which has a broad dynamic range (detectable photons from 1 MeV to 10 GeV). It has been used at various places for more than 10 years now for heavy-ion experiments (at GSI, GANIL and KVI) and photoproduction experiments (at MAMI). I participated in the data analysis of the 1994-95 GSI campaign, helped with the setup of the detector in the KVI, and created a set of programs (KANE : GEANT-based simulation, FOSTER: decoding and calibration tool, ROSEBUD: analysis tool) for the 1996-97 KVI campaign. The same set of tools has been used by the whole collaboration both for the KVI campaign and for the 1998 GANIL campaign. In particular I had the leading role in the analysis (from raw data to physics results) of the KVI p+A at 190 MeV experiment which was performed to try to disentangle compression-like effects, and to settle a reference to compare heavy-ion data with. Major part of this work was performed in GANIL, Caen, France.

During my post-doc at SUBATECH (Nantes, France), my interests broadened to the transition towards quark-gluon plasma that may be formed in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions. Fall 1998, I participated to the creation of the GPS (Groupe Photons de Subatech) which is actively involved in electromagnetic calorimetry in (ultra)-relativistic heavy-ion experiments, being fixed-target ones, like WA98/LEDA at CERN SPS, or collider ones, like PHENIX/EMCAL at RHIC and ALICE/PHOS at LHC. The group activity spans various domains from detector R&D (preshower detector for PHOS), physics analysis (p+A WA98 experiment), to development of offline analysis code (for ALICE/PHOS) and online computing (PHENIX/EMCAL Trouble shooting and Database management). While keeping in touch with all those various activities, I am more specifically in charge of software developments for PHENIX/EMCAL, and act as a "software mentor" for the whole group.

In all my research activities I deal with systems that are in principle governed by the strong interaction, described by the quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Nevertheless, as for many complex systems, their behavior does have some characteristics that we do not know (for nuclei) or we know weakly (for high energy nuclear matter) how to explain from fundamental interactions between elementary constituents (quarks). I am really motivated by the fact that experimental measure is absolutely necessary to gain some knowledge about those non-perturbative QCD domains.

Since October 2000, I am a permanent CNRS researcher in SUBATECH, Nantes.

During the period Oct. 2000-Apr. 2002, my main focus shifted from PHENIX to the MEGAPIE (MEGAwatt PIlot Experiment) project, aiming at the construction and safe operation of a 1 MW class spallation target at the Paul Sherrer Institute (Switzerland).

Since April 2002 I'm 100% back to PHENIX, as can be seen from the publication list below...