Biography
Born in 1972, Philippe Baptiste holds a PhD from the University of Technology of Compiègne and a civil engineering degree from Mines de Nancy. He also holds an MSc from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, a DEA from Sorbonne University and a habilitation to direct research.
As a digital scientist, Philippe Baptiste is a specialist in algorithms, combinatorial optimization, operations research and artificial intelligence. He has led an academic career as a researcher at the CNRS (1999), at the Watson Research Center of IBM (2000-2001), and as a lecturer at the École Polytechnique (2002-2012). He is the author of several books and about 150 publications and scientific papers. He directed the Computer Science Laboratory at École Polytechnique, created the Institute of Information Sciences and their Interactions before becoming in 2014 Deputy Director General of CNRS, one of the first partners of CNES. He has also served on the Board of Directors of INRIA.
While pursuing an academic career, Philippe Baptiste has also participated in the creation and development of several startups and led numerous collaborations with industrialists in the digital, aeronautics and defense sectors. He was Scientific Director and then CTO of the Total Group (2016-2017) and “Partner and Director” at the Boston Consulting Group (2020).
From May 2017 to April 2019, he was the Chief of Staff of Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and then, in November 2019, advisor to Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Throughout this period, he followed space policy.