
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).