Florent Krzakala
Biography: Originally, my main research focus has been the statistical physics of disordered systems and the study of the collective behavior of complex assemblies of simple elementary components. This includes glassy systems such as spin glasses, random polymers or a jammed ensemble of colloids, quantum problems but also simpler models in a out-of-equilibrium situation, for instance ferromagnets quenched at their critical points. It turns out that this problematic naturally arises in other fields than physics, and in particular in computer science problems as diverse as combinatorial optimization, statistical inference, machine learning and signal processing. This has become over the last few years a rapidly evolving and exciting field at the interface of many disciplines, which we study together with the SPHINX group.
Field(s) of Research: Computer Science Theory, General Non-equilibrium Statistical Physics, Stochastic Thermodynamics