Professional Activities
1984-1987. PhD studies on the perceptual bases of the control of displacement (URA CNRS 1166, Cognition et Mouvement). 1988. Post-doc studies at Brown University , Providence, R.I., USA (Départment of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences). Subject: Psychophysics of Optic flow perception (Supervosor: William H. Warren). 1988-1996. Full-time researcher at CNRS (Cognition & Movement Lab). 1996- Senior Researcher (Cognitive Neuroscience Center). 2000-2004. Research Director, Head of "Perception and Cognition Group", Cognitive and Physiological Neuroscience Institute (Marseille) 2004-2007 Research Director, Head of "Immersive Interactive Vision" Group, Movement and Perception Lab (JL Vercher, director), CNRS & University Aix-Marseille II (Marseille- France) 2004-2005. Visiting scholar at IMSC, University of Southern California 2004-2006 Manager for the project "Immersive and Interactive Scientific Visualisation" (Federal Research Institute Etienne-Jules Marey) 2007- Head of the Mediterranean Virtual Reality Center (CRVM ) 2008- Head of the "Immersions" Group, Institute of Movement Sciences (ISM) 2016- Member of the Program Committee of the CNRS Research Consortium "Computer Graphics & Virtual Reality" GDR IGRV 2017-2019 President of the French Association of Virtual Reality (AFRV) 2019- Vice-President of the French Association for immersive technologies AFXR 2020- Member of the Executive Committee of the European Association for immersive virtual reality technologies EUROXR
Major Research Interests
Visual Perception, motion perception, visual psychophysics, optic flow processing Cognitive control of visual perception Pharmacological and neuropsychological approaches to visual information processing Sensori-motor interactions in Virtual Reality Immersive Active Perception, Presence
Main Research Grants
1998-1999. Research contract from "Agence du Médicament, " Effects of Lorazepam on motion segmentation thresholds in healthy volunteers ". In collaboration with Prof O. Blin & B. Bruguerolle (CHU Timone, Marseille). 1997-2000 Clinical Research Program (PHRC 97), "Dévelopment of an evaluation model for schizophrenia treatment". In collaboration with Prof O. Blin & B. Bruguerolle (CHU Timone, & CPCET, Marseille). 1998-2001. Research program from the Ministry of Transportation (PREDIT 1996-2000) "Road safety in tunnels". In collaboration with ISIS group. 2000-2003. Research program from "Fondation de France", "Perturbations of vision, speech and motricity in autism: The hypothesis of a temporal coding deficit". Joint program between CNRS laboratories and Hospital Services. Coordinator: Jean Massion (Professor Emeritus, CNRS and University of Provence). See TIPA Review 2002-2006. European Research Training Network "Perception for Recognition and Action" 2003-2006. ARCOS Research project (Road Safety Innovation Program, PREDIT). 2006-2009. Prevensor Research Program (PREDIT). 2004- 2007. INTUITION (Network of Excellence on Virtual Reality and Virtual Environment Applications for Future Workspaces). 2006-2010. Research Program from the Ministry of Transportation (PREDIT). MEDICO (Médicaments et Conduite). Coordinator 2006-2010. Research Program RNTL (Réseau National de Technologies Logicielles). Part@ge (Collaborative Interaction ) 2008-2011. "Phidias" project, collaboration with Eurocopter. “Virtual Crew assistant” 2008-2010. DGA contract, "Visuo-spatial orientation mechanisms” 2008-2010. " Multimodal Interfaces in Virtual Reality", CNRS project, in collaboration with P. Blache (LPL) and J. Farre (I3D lab) 2009-2012. " VIRTUal interactive mock-up with new Applicative Real Time layers". (coordinator : société OPTIS) 2009-2011. « Display formats for the evaluation of virtual mockups », in collaboration with Renault 2010-2012. "Virtual Coach" project, in collaboration with Raxine/Elite 2011-2014. Visionair project, VISION Advanced Infrastructure for Research, FP7 European project 2013-2015. SIMVIR project, 3D digital models for simulator studies and driver training, SIMVIR 2013-2017. Innovations Thérapeutiques dans les Maladies Mentales (CNRS Interdisciplinary program). Acrophobia treatment using Virtual Reality. CTRLSTRESS 2014-2019. ANR Acorformed : Virtual Reality for Training Doctors to Break Bad News. Acorformed 2015- Openlab PSA 2019- Embodied Language Learning (w/ Cheryl Frenck-Mestre, Ana Zappa) ILCB