Researcher in Theoretical Cosmology
Doctor who?
As a Norman born in Brittany and raised in a city with an undefined identity (is Nantes a Breton land? It is the millennium question), Yoann was perhaps fated for problems. His first encounter with space, and most importantly cosmology, was NOT while watching the stars, an apple falling from a tree, a rocket launching, or while reading A Brief History of Time. Yoann simply doesn’t remember, because he just likes to learn a lot and has limited storage space. You can identify him as a fraud French, self-proclaimed Viking, who doesn’t want to talk about croissants and Paris at the first occasion.
After realising that zookeeper was not his destiny, that heart surgeon would take too long to study, and that politics… well, anyway, he decided to do something involving maths. (!Nerd alert!) Maths were comforting and felt right, until an existential overdose when he realised that maybe he liked it mainly as a tool to answer day-to-day questions. He had a great time doing Physics in a Grande Ecole in Paris, followed by a master’s in Cambridge. He started his academic research journey at the former, where he worked on reconstructing the quantum structure of crystals. In Cambridge, he started looking into theoretical physics, and eventually his own series of why? questions converged (or diverged?) towards asking how? about the whole thing (more commonly called the Universe).
In the past 3+ years, Yoann has studied the early, fast-expanding universe by extending Einstein’s equations of General Relativity to fluctuations generated by the quantum vacuum. In this process, he has also looked at the classicalisation of spacetime correlations and has produced and run cutting-edge simulations of the inflating universe (and still does). Pen, paper and supercomputer is a lovely routine of his.
After work, Yoann goes to sleep. But before that, cooking his meal is usually the highlight of the day, when not topped by learning guitar for the billionth time. As a standard STEM cliche, Yoann is also into hiking and bouldering. Beyond that, what is there to say, beyond the fact that entropy is non-decreasing.
News
- (16/12/2025) My fourth PhD article is out! see preprint. The final proof of concept of my PhD project is now in the wild.
- (4/10/2025 to hopefully soon) Postdoc applications in progress…
- (3/10/2025) End of a great placement, closing with a paper sent to a Machine Learning conference! see submission.
- (16/03/2025) Now confirmed: as part of my PhD requirements, I will be doing a placement, which I chose to do at Featurespace from April and for six months!
- (12/02/2025) My third PhD article and first with spacetime simulations is out! see preprint.
- (11/02/2025) An interesting article where my simulations are featured.
- (05/01/2025) My second PhD article is out! see preprint.
- (02/04/2024) I will be one of the Smith-Knight and Rayleigh-Knight 2024 Prize recipients!
- (16/01/2024) I published my first article in cosmology! see preprint.
- (1/11/2023) My first feature article for Bluesci, see issue no. 58 here (page 26).
- (1/11/2023) New book review article in Bluesci, see issue no. 57 here (page 5).
- (7/04/2023) G-Research grant obtained! see article.
They financed or supported my work
Contact
Email: yl844 at cam.ac.uk
Office: Center for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge, CB3 0WA, United Kingdom.