My research interests are in theoretical condensed matter and statistical physics. Most of my recent research deals with the physics of strong electron-electron interactions. These interactions have spectacular effects in materials such as transition metals and their oxides, high-temperature superconductors,  f-electron compounds and organic conductors. I am interested in these effects from the viewpoint of models and basic mechanisms, as well as in combination with first-principle electronic structure methods. I also have a strong interest in the physics of cold atoms in optical lattices.

I graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 1983, and joined Ecole Normale Superieure (Laboratoire de Physique Théorique) for my graduate studies. After initial steps (and a few publications) in high-energy theory, I worked for several years on disordered systems, most notably spin-glasses and non-Brownian diffusion in disordered environments (I am the author of a review article on this subject, in collaboration with J.P. Bouchaud). I defended my PhD thesis at LPT-ENS in 1988 (the committee was chaired by Pierre Gilles de Gennes).
At this stage, I was ready for a change and wanted to learn about strongly-correlated electron systems (it was soon after the discovery of high-temperature superconductors), and I was offered in 1989 a postdoc at Princeton University with Phil Anderson and Daniel Fisher. I worked there from 1989 to 1991. In the fall of 1990, I started collaborating with Gabriel Kotliar, who had recently joined Rutgers University. We developed together the mapping onto a self-consistent quantum impurity model, which is at the heart of the Dynamical Mean-Field Theory approach to strongly correlated fermion systems. I have pursued research in condensed matter physics of strongly correlated systems ever since my return to France, in the fall of 1991. Among the research achievements that I am particularly happy with are: the DMFT-based theory of the Mott transition (with Werner Krauth, and in close connection with the Rutgers group of G.Kotliar), the exact solution of the 2-impurity 2-channel Kondo problem (with Anirvan Sengupta), an investigation of the 2-impurity Kondo effect in double quantum dots (with Yigal Meir), a large-N study of quantum Heisenberg spin-glasses and doped spin liquids (with Olivier Parcollet and Subir Sachdev), a collaboration with Patrice Limelette and the group of Denis Jerome which resulted in the first experimental study of the critical behaviour at the Mott critical endpoint, several studies of correlated materials combining DMFT with ab-initio density functional  methods, including a proposal for merging GW and DMFT into a first-principle scheme for strongly correlated materials (with Silke Biermann and Ferdi Aryasetiawan), and work on cooling and spectroscopy in ultra-cold atom systems. Recently, my research has focused mostly on the physics of copper-oxide high-temperature superconductors, iron pnictides, and the emerging field of condensed matter physics with ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices. 
In 2003, I moved to Ecole Polytechnique, where I have set up a research group on strongly correlated systems in the Centre de Physique Théorique. In 2009, I have been awarded the chair of Condensed Matter Physics at Collège de France.

Distinctions: I received the "Anatole et Suzanne Abragam Prize" of the Academie des Sciences in 1991,  the "Prix Dargelos" in 2004 (here, the speech -in French- I gave on this occasion) and the "Médaille d'Argent du CNRS" in 2007. In 2006,  with Gabriel Kotliar, Walter Metzner, Dieter Vollhardt, I was awarded the Condensed Matter Europhysics Prize (European Physical Society and Agilent Technologies) for ``the development and application of Dynamical Mean-Field Theory''.