Yves Bréchet

Yves Bréchet is Professor of Materials Science at Grenoble-INP and Associate Professor at McMaster (Canada) and Jiaotong (China). Previously an industry consultant and member of the French National Commission for Nuclear Waste, he was appointed High Commissioner for Atomic Energy in 2012. He is also a member of the French Academy of Sciences. A graduate of the École Polytechnique engineering school and holder of a doctorate in materials physics, his work focuses on microstructural transformations in metals and alloys, microstructure/properties relationships and materials selection methods. More recently, his analysis of architectures in natural materials has served as a guide to the development of "tailor-made materials", combining multimaterials and geometries to extend the field of conventional materials.

Education

• École polytechnique (1981-1984)
• Doctorate from Grenoble University (1987)
• Habilitation to direct research (1992)

Honorary distinctions

• Member of the Académie des Sciences, Academia Europea and European Academy of Sciences

Research area

Yves Bréchet's scientific activity, both in terms of research and training, is centered on the science of materials, and in particular metals and alloys. This deliberate choice from the moment he graduated from the École Polytechnique corresponds to a pronounced taste for interdisciplinarity (materials science is an intermediary between physics, chemistry and mechanics), and a desire to combine fundamental research with an engineering vision.

All Yves Bréchet's research projects have one thing in common: extracting from industrial issues the key scientific issues that require fundamental research to make progress in the development of increasingly high-performance materials. This guiding principle has led him to work on the genesis of microstructures controlled by the mastery of elaboration and transformation processes, on the relationship between microstructures and mechanical properties, on plastic instabilities, and on questions of optimal materials selection. Most of our work focuses on modeling, in close collaboration with experimentalists. In recent years, this move towards "tailor-made materials" has led him to develop work on "architected" materials, enabling the creation of higher-performance multifunctional materials, and "biomimetic" approaches, seeking inspiration in nature for new materials.

This positioning at the interface between the academic and industrial worlds, in a discipline that permeates all areas of engineering science, has led him to work in fields as varied as aeronautics, automobiles and energy production, as well as functional materials, microelectronics and biomedical materials. The engineer's designs demand reliability and durability: this has led him to systematically study the ageing of materials, particularly in fields such as nuclear power generation. As a specialist in materials in a nuclear environment, he was appointed a member of the CNE, which assesses research into waste disposal.

Yves Bréchet's approach as a bridge-builder between industry and fundamental research has led him to closely associate research and training, training engineers and training researchers (75 PhD students), in the firm belief that part of the answer to the difficult technical problems facing modern society lies in the development of high-performance materials, and that these developments require a joint approach by engineers and scientists. This has led him to combine his academic activities with scientific consultancy work for companies (ArcelorMittal, Constellium, EDF) and public research institutes (CEA, ONERA).

Author of more than 600 publications and three books, and co-author of numerous expert reports including the recent Academies' report on metallurgy, he has received numerous national and international awards, including: pechiney prize from the Académie des Sciences (1990), FEMS European prize for materials science and technology junior prize (1995), Korber Foundation prize (1996), Bastien Guillet prize from SF2M (2000), CNRS silver medal (2009), Li Hsun Research Award (Chinese Academy of Sciences) (2010), Von Humboldt-Gay-Lussac prize (2010). He holds an honorary doctorate from McMaster University (2012).

Highly involved in the metallurgical community, he has been a member of the CNU, a member of CNRS Commission 9, and has coordinated numerous scientific projects such as the CPR "Alliages Aéronautiques" (96-99), the GDR "Intermétalliques Ti Al" (2000-2004), the MAPO project (2005-2009) and the MANSART project (2009-2012) and the CPR on architectural materials (2009-2012), the CPR "Odyssée" (on ODS alloys) (2011-). He is currently Scientific Director of Labex CEMAM (Matériaux architecturés multifonctionnels). Highly motivated by teaching, engineering training and scientific culture in junior high schools, he chaired the Board of Directors of the Paris School of Chemistry (2011-) and also chairs the Scientific Board of the Foundation for Science Education in Junior High Schools (Fondation LAMAP de l'Académie des sciences) (2011-).