Rémi Abgrall
Rémi Abgrall has been a student in mathematics (1981-1985) of Ecole Normale
Supérieure de Saint Cloud (which has become part of ENS Lyon). After his
studies in pure mathematics in Orsay, and after obtaining the "agrégation
de mathématiques", he changed orientation to fluid mechanics. He did his
PhD at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD) at Ecole Normale
Supérieure under the supervision of Claude Basdevant. He graduated in
December 1987 with a thesis on a semi Lagrangian model of 2D turbulence,
refereed by Olivier Pironneau and Marcel Lesieur. Initially unwilling to
go to academia, he was hired in September 1987 as research engineer at
ONERA, on a project on the simulation of multispecies flows for internal
aerodynamics. There, he was lucky to work under the supervision of
Jean-Louis Montagnier, from whom he learned a lot. The time at ONERA
was short as he was soon hired as research scientist at INRIA Sophia
Antipolis, where he joined in September 1988 the team SINUS led by
Alain Dervieux.
The initial plan was to work on hypersonic flows for the Hermes project.
While at INRIA, following the advice by Jacques Périaux (Dassault Aviation),
he visited ICASE during the whole summer of 1991, and again in 1992.
This allowed him to get into contact with Ami Harten with whom he worked
during his stay at UCLA in 1993-1994, before Ami passed away. Thanks to
the support of Ami Harten, Alain Dervieux, Gilles Kahn and Pierre Bernhard
(all from INRIA), he could spend a year (1995-1996 right after his return
from UCLA) at the Courant Institute in New York.
In September 1996, Rémi Abgrall became professor at the University of
Bordeaux I,
then full professor in 2001, and distinguished professor in 2008. He was
involved in the creation of one of the first project-teams of the to-be
Inria center in Bordeaux and, later on from 2008 to 2013, he was the
leader of Inria Team Bacchus. He left Bordeaux for the University of
Zurich in January 2014. There, since October 2016, he is a member of
the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Since
August 2021, he is director of the Institute of Mathematics of the
University of Zurich.
Rémi Abgrall is or has been associate editor of many scientific journals: the
Journal of Computational Physics, Mathematics of Computation, Computers
and Fluids, the Journal of Scientific Computing, Mathematical Modelling
and Numerical Analysis (M2AN), Communication in Computational Physics,
Communication on Applied Mathematics and Computation, Mathematics and
and Computers in Simulation, Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied
Sciences (M3AS). He has been co-editor of International Journal for
Numerical Methods in Fluids. He belongs to the editorial boards of
several book series: Mathématiques et Application (Springer), Series
in Applied and Numerical Mathematics (de Gruyer). Since September 2015,
he is editor in chief of the Journal of Computational Physics.
In 2001, Rémi Abgrall was the recipient of the SMAI GAMNI prize given by the French
Academy of Sciences. In 2008, he was awarded an ERC advanced grant (ADDECCO).
He has been one of the invited speakers of the ICM in 2014. He has been
selected in the class 2022 of the SIAM Fellows "for fundamental contributions
to the development of numerical methods for conservation laws, in particular
for multi-fluid flows and residual distribution schemes".
All this has been possible thanks to the help of many people, some have
been mentioned above.
One has played a central role: Sophie Duchemin with whom Rémi has 4 children
(Vincent, Marie, Sarah and David). Their trajectories have been separated
for a few years, but the sacrifices are not forgotten. Friends also have
been very important to Rémi: Anne, Smadar, Hervé, Mario, among many others.
