Francqui-Chair VUB - Academic Year 2023-2024: appointed to - Prof. dr. Stephane Jaffard , Université Paris Est Créteil

Prof. Dr. Jaffard is world renowned for his research in harmonic analysis. In particular, he is a leading expert in multifractal analysis. Characteristic of his research is the strong link between fundamental and applied mathematics. On the one hand, his work laid the foundation for many deep theoretical developments and on the other hand, he used these results to make progress in all kinds of practical problems, including in image processing and physics. Concrete examples are the automatic classification of large collections of images, the detection of counterfeit paintings (Van Gogh challenge) and the modeling of turbulent flows. Furthermore, in 1991, together with Ingrid Daubechies (alumna of the VUB and affiliated with the Mathematics & Data Science department) and Jean Lin Journé, he constructed so-called Wilson bases. These mathematical objects have since been used in numerous applications, including being an essential ingredient in the recently developed procedure to observe gravitational waves.