Could you shortly describe your academic background?

I got my education in the fields of chemistry and physical chemistry at the University of Rouen which is in Normandy, then I continued at the University of Montpellier, in the South of France, and finally got my Ph.D. I spent one year in England at the University of Cambridge and two years in Montpellier. After that, I went to the United States as a Postdoc Researcher at Stanford University. When I came back to France, I had my first job in the industry - I was a Researcher and my field was electrochemical accumulators. Then I was hired at the University of Montpellier in 1995 as an Assistant Professor and was appointed Full Professor in 2000. I teach thermodynamics, electrochemistry, and material sciences. I am also extremely active in terms of Research in the field of solid-state physical chemistry and the main topics that I am involved concern ionic transport and absorption phenomena. At the present time, I am actually doing Research in physics and we work on ionic transport in single carbon nanotubes: it is nanoscience and physical chemistry.

What are your impressions about teaching at UFAZ?

It is extremely important for any teacher to have a teaching experience abroad, to know how students behave, how they feel, and how you as an instructor can teach differently. Here in UFAZ, it is mandatory to speak in English, so it is quite an interesting experience. It was my first time of teaching during so many hours only in English. I was pleased to have this experience and hope to come back soon for more teaching!  

What are your feedbacks about UFAZ students?

My feeling is that they are students like everywhere around the world. Some of them look extremely interested, some of them not, some have questions, in general like in France. Some of them approach me after class, they also have questions during the lecture or exercise session and those students look extremely bright. It was pleasing to teach at UFAZ.

As we know, you are a former Vice President for International Relations of the University of Montpellier. In such you have been coming to Azerbaijan regularly since 2013 and followed UFAZ project from its very beginning. It would be interesting to hear from you about this one!

Indeed I was Vice President for International Relations of University of Montpellier from 2012 to 2018. As such I have been involved in a few projects of bilateral universities. We have French high schools almost everywhere in the world, but we do not have many French Universities abroad. We have the French-German University, the French-Italian University, the French-Vietnamese University, we also have a French-Egyptian University, and recently we established French-Spanish and French-Georgian Universities, and we have been told about a new project in Tunisia etc. All these universities are state/ public projects. I would tell that none of them works in the same way, it much depends on how they are financially supported by the local governments. Some of them can have good and strong support like UFAZ and what I can see here today it that UFAZ really works well. You have really well-organized lectures, teacher exchanges, and maybe in the future, some student exchanges! Thanks to the strong support of Azerbaijani authorities, to the support of the French embassy in Azerbaijan, and to the people who are in charge of the university, UFAZ from my points of view runs extremely well. It also owes much to my colleagues of the University of Strasburg, deeply involved in UFAZ and extremely motivated and committed to make it a great university. In less than three years, it can be readily considered a  success taking into account the number of students, the quality of the teaching and of the premises and equipment! These are all very positive elements!

I am very confident that as long as the Azerbaijani government will strongly support UFAZ, it will become one of the major higher institutions in your country and in the region. 

Interview realized by UFAZ PR department in Baku on 8 November 2018