Sylvain Girard’s scientific page
I lead the “Reliability & Robustness” team at Phimeca Engineering Paris.
We use applied mathematics and physical modelling to help designing, operating and maintaining industrial system safely and efficiently.
My topics of interest include
From data and simulation to decision – Modelling creates uncertainty. This is a bad product: people mostly want to get rid of it. We help our partners to shift from the illusion of complete control to robust risk management and efficient decision processes.
Embracing complexity – Complexity also bears negative connotation. Yet, complex systems have emergent behaviours that go far beyond those of their parts: otherwise we would stick to hammer an nails kind of technologies (sometimes we should). We tackle this by dimension reduction, deep learning, and system scale (0D/1D multi-physics) modelling.
From R&D to something else – Modelling is a tribal activity: a small group share tacit (=hard to transcribe) knowledge of great potential. Good ideas often lead to good R&D. Often, good R&D leads to… good ideas at best. We help partners to widen the innovation spiral and produce concrete outcomes.
AI, Animal Intelligence – I am always ready to discuss opportunities for new cooperation of any kind if it does not entail chatbots.
“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” – Saul Bellow cited by Shaun Tan in Tales from outer suburbia (The amnesia machine).
News
Recent and upcoming talks
2026/11/17 – NAFEMS France 2026. I will give a talk entitled “System scale digital twins with Modelica and Python” (« Jumeaux numériques à l’échelle système avec Modelica et Python ») during the afternoon session.
2026/2/3 – The IMPACT project team kindly invited me to talk during a mathematical dissemination conference. I told anecdotes about the pitfalls of modelling from research and design to effective use. Why many engineering problems are still open since decades? [🗎 get slides]
2024/10/14→17/ – λμ24 hosted by Institut de Maîtrise des Risques (IMdR). I presented the first results of the POLIVAL project: “’Uncertainty’: the elephant in the living rooom of soil pollution management?.” [🗎 get slides]
2024/10/11 – TSP day organised by EDF and Phimeca. I presented “HeatXSysPro: From Excel to robust tool for Air Fan Coolers performance assessment” [🗎 get slides]
