AIM Group

Filippo Masi is research scientist at Inria, Université Grenoble Alpes | TRIPOP team. Before that, he was a Research Associate at the University of Sydney (Australia), working with Itai Einav. He completed his studies at the School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Florence (Italy), and conducted his thesis at École Centrale de Nantes and École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (France). His research mainly focuses on developing theoretical and numerical methods to predict the behavior of complex material systems, with emphasis on scale transitions to provide multiscale models. His expertise includes mechanics of materials, thermodynamics-informed ML, fast and structural dynamics, and nonlinear mechanical phenomena.

Vincent Acary is research director at Inria, Université Grenoble Alpes | TRIPOP team. His research focuses on modeling, analyzing, and simulating nonsmooth dynamical systems, with applications in mechanics (impacts, contact, friction) and engineering (robotics, electrical circuits). He has contributed significantly to time-integration methods for these systems, particularly those involving unilateral constraints and Coulomb friction. He is a key contributor to Siconos, an open-source platform for simulating nonsmooth systems. He collaborates with industrial partners to apply his research to real-world problems, including robotics and mechanical systems with frictional contacts. He is also the founder and editor of the Journal of Theoretical, Computational and Applied Mechanics.

Franck Bourrier’s research focuses on the numerical modelling of interactions between rigid bodies and deformable structures. His work is mainly applied to rock-fall hazard modelling in mountainous environments, including the response of granular materials to impact, rock-block propagation, and the protective effects of forests and safety nets. He also contributes to transferring the models developed by Inria | TRIPOP and IGE | ECRINS teams, in the field of rock-fall risk via the Platrock platform.

Gioacchino Viggiani is professor at Université Grenoble Alpes, 3SR laboratory, and a geomechanics specialist. He has held visiting professorships at Georgia Tech, Kumamoto, Sydney, Edinburgh and Napoli. His work combines advanced experiments—such as digital image correlation and X-ray micro-tomography—with theoretical and numerical modelling to study geomaterial behavior, including localized failure and hydro-mechanical coupling, for geo-environmental, energy and civil-engineering applications. In 2007 he founded and still directs Grenoble’s English-language master’s programme in Geomechanics, Civil Engineering & Risks, which has trained 200 students from over 30 countries.

Michael Arbel is research scientist at Inria, Université Grenoble Alpes – THOTH team. Before that, he was a Starting Research Fellow at the same team, working with Julien Mairal. He graduated from Ecole polytechnique with a focus in Applied Mathematics and obtained a Masters Degree in Mathematics, Machine Learning and Computer Vision (MVA) from ENS Paris-Saclay. He completed his Ph.D. in 2021 at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit of University College London. His research interests include bilevel optimization, generative modelling, learning theory and representation learning.

Thierry Faug’s research focuses on the physics and mechanics of complex-fluid flows (granular materials, snow) and their interaction with obstacles, drawing on theory, laboratory and field experiments, and numerical modelling. The main goal is to develop tools and methods that improve our understanding, prediction, and mitigation of rapid gravity-driven flows such as snow and ice avalanches or landslides. He directly applies these tools and methods in expert assessments and consultancy work for various partners, particularly in the area of avalanche protection.

Florian Vincent is completing his PhD in optimization and thermodynamics-based machine learning at the TRIPOP team, under the supervision of Vincent Acary, Jérôme Malick, and Filippo Masi. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure d’informatique et de mathématiques appliquées de Grenoble (ENSIMAG) as computer scientist. His current research interests are oriented towards distributionally robust optimization, convex analysis, physics-informed machine learning, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics.