Biography

I (Gaël Poux-Médard, Paris, 1996) obtained a literary baccalaureate in 2014 in Strasbourg (France), and immediately switched to learning physics at the University Lyon 1 (France). After finishing my physics bachelor in 2017, I integrated the Ecole Normale Supérieure or ENS de Lyon. During my M.Sc degree “Physics of complex systems”, I completed two internships in machine learning: in SEES:lab, Università Rovira i Virgilli (Tarragona, Spain) for 3 months, and at the Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi or CNR-ISC (Rome, Italy) for 6 months. In parallel, I obtained a M.Sc degree in Digital Humanities at the ENS of Lyon. Both M.Sc degrees were obtained in 2019. Finally, I defended on September 2022 a PhD thesis I started in October 2019 at the Université de Lyon (Université Lumière Lyon II).

Writing this short resume, I hope I managed to emphasise two of my most defining traits: flexibility and curiosity. I switched from a literary baccalaureate to a physics B.Sc in order to explore natural sciences. I did a similar leap when I started applied mathematics and computer science, first at the ENS, then within a PhD. This transition implied to learn about a whole new field I had little explored before, and led to international publications within the following year. Finally, I passed a Digital Humanities degree. I always kept a strong interest in social sciences; this degree helps me to broaden my horizon of computational social sciences applications. My motivation has not changed since, and is about exploring how mathematical sciences can help social sciences. The idea is to bridge the gap between researchers in the field and the enormous amount of data they possess yet did not extensively explore.

Studies

2022: Ph.D in Computer Sciences at the Université de Lyon “Interactions in Information Spread” under the direction of J.Velcin and S.Loudcher.
2019: M.Sc in Digital Humanities at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) of Lyon (15.16/20, rank 1/20)
2019: M.Sc in Complex Systems at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) of Lyon (15.27/20, rank 4/12)
2017: B.Sc in physics at the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (15.58/20, A rank)
2014: Literary baccalaureate at the Jean Mermoz high school, Saint-Louis (“Good” mention)

Languages

French (mother tongue)
English (C2 level)
Italian (B2 level)

Internships

2019: Internship at La Sapienza – Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi (Roma) entitled “Study of the problem of optimal spreaders for the SIS model for epidemics”, supervised by C. CASTELLANO
2018: Internship at the university Rovira I Virgili – SEES:Lab (Spain) as part of the project entitled “Statistical mechanics for modeling and prediction of human behavior”, supervised by M. SALES-PARDO
2017: Internship at the Institut Lumière Matière (iLM) of Lyon entitled « Bubble nanofluidics », supervised by C. YBERT and O. BONHOMME
2011-2016: Volunteer on the archeological excavation site of Puy-de-Corent, Auvergne.