Nicolas Franceschini
Directeur de Recherche (Emeritus) Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS
Nicolas Franceschini was born in Mâcon, France. He graduated in electronics and control theory from the National Polytechnic Institute, Grenoble. In 1972, he received the Masters’ Degree in Sciences in Physics from the University of Grenoble with a thesis on “Micro-optics in the Insect Compound Eye”. He switched to neuroscience and behavioral science, spending 13 years at the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany. Upon returning to France, he set up the Neurocybernetics lab, and later the Biorobotics lab, at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Marseille. His research interests cover neural information processing, vision, eye movements, micro-optics, neuromorphic circuits, sensory-motor control systems, biologically inspired robots and insect inspired autopilots. Since 1985, he largely contributed to the foundation of Biorobotics. Nicolas Franceschini has given more than 150 invited talks at international conferences and received several national and international prizes in both Neuroscience and Engineering. He is a member of the Academia Europaea.