At Paris-Sud University (Paris XI) he graduated in 1983 with Diplôme d'études approfondies (DEA) and in 1986 with doctorate in mathematics.
[1] His doctoral dissertation Analyse microlocale précisée de solutions d’équations aux dérivées partielles non linéaires was supervised by Jean-Michel Bony.
In 1989 he received his habilitation with a thesis on singularities of nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations.
[1] His research deals with nonlinear partial differential equations describing physical systems that evolve over time.
[3] In 2012 he was awarded the Grand Prix Servant of the French Academy of Sciences for his work on the Navier-Stokes equations.