Vincent Boulard - PhD student at CERMICS (École nationale des ponts et chaussées) and LJLL (Sorbonne Université)
Vincent Boulard - PhD student at CERMICS (École nationale des ponts et chaussées) and LJLL (Sorbonne Université)

Vincent Boulard

PhD student at CERMICS (École nationale des ponts et chaussées) and LJLL (Sorbonne Université).

About me

Since October 2025, I have been a PhD student in mathematics under the supervision of Amaury Hayat (CERMICS – École nationale des ponts et chaussées) and Emmanuel Trélat (LJLL – Sorbonne Université). My research lies at the intersection of control theory, partial differential equations, and geometric analysis.

Research interests

My current research is organized around four main directions:

  • F-equivalence and stabilization of PDEs — I study F-equivalence, a functional-analytic framework for constructing feedback laws that transform a controlled PDE into a prescribed exponentially stable system, with applications to rapid stabilization.
  • Sub-Riemannian geometry and hypoelliptic equations — I investigate how the constrained geometry underlying sub-Laplacians affects the observability of hypoelliptic heat equations, notably through phenomena absent from the elliptic setting, such as a positive minimal time of controllability.
  • Spectral geometry — I study generic properties of Dirichlet spectra and eigenfunctions under domain perturbations, and how these typical spectral features reflect geometry.
  • Mean-field limits and measure differential equations — I work on geometric structures for nonlocal dynamics arising as mean-field limits of interacting particle systems, with the aim of extending Lie brackets and geometric controllability methods to Wasserstein spaces.

Awards

  • Perronet Prize 2026 — Best graduating engineering student award from École nationale des ponts et chaussées.
  • Fermat Junior Prize 2023 — Award for an outstanding undergraduate research thesis in mathematics (available here), Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse.

Games

Wednesday 07/01/26, I played ranked matches of a highly advanced mathematical game against Sara Khichane, winning all of them — 4 victories in total (there was also one unranked match, which Sara won by sheer luck).