Jean Paul Frédéric Serra (born 1940 in Algeria) is a French mathematician and engineer, and known as one of the co-founders (together with Georges Matheron) of mathematical morphology.

Serra received a scientific baccalauréat in 1957, and an engineering degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Nancy in 1962.

During that period, Serra came up with the idea of using structuring elements for transforming images of cross sections of the ore, in order to gain information about it.

In the Winter of 1966, in a pub of Nancy,[1] Matheron, Philippe Formery, and Serra decided to give a name to this body of works: "Mathematical morphology".

The new theory and method has since evolved to be applied in a variety of image processing problems and tasks, and is researched worldwide[2] (main article: Mathematical morphology).