LGEF/INSA Members

Pierre-Jean Cottinet was graduated from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (INSA de Lyon) in 2008. He received a PhD degree in Acoustics in 2010 at INSA de Lyon with the support of French defense procurement agency (DGA).  In  2011,  he  was  a  post-doctoral  researcher  at  HPMI  (High-Performance  Materials  Institute),  Florida  State  University  where  he  worked  on  the buckypaper characterization. Currently, he is full professor at INSA de Lyon, LGEF laboratory and his research interests are characterization of electroactive materials, mechatronics and 4D printing. He co-supervised 16 PhD students. He co-authored 116 papers and 9 patents, and he is the PI for more than 1.5M€ of bilateral contracts with companies. 

On the Live-Mirror project, Pierre-Jean Cottinet brings his expertise in the integration of electroactive materials which involves setting up design criteria and performance compromise.

David Audigier was born in France in 1966. He received the B.S. degree from Lyon I University, Lyon, France, in 1988, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degre es from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (INSA de Lyon), Lyon, France, in 1990 and 1996, respectively, all in electrical engineering. In 1997, he became an Assistant Professor at the INSA de Lyon, where he joined the Laboratoire de Génie Electrique et Ferroélectricité. His current research activities include piezoelectric systems, energy harvesting, vibration control and noise reduction, and characterization and power applications of piezoelectric materials.

“My work in the Live-Mirror project concerns the optimization of the electromechanical properties of new electroactive materials to meet the application requirements of the project. The optimization of electromechanical conversion properties of actuators requires understanding of many phenomena and a fine systematic characterization is necessary. This enables the development of high-quality adaptive optical mirrors for next-generation telescopes.”

Dr. Minh-Quyen Lê received her electrical engineering and  M.Sc. degrees in Acoustics from INSA de Lyon, France in 2008. She then received her Ph.D. degree in electronics, electrotechnics and automatics from INSA de Lyon in 2011. After working one year as a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Informatics, Robotics, and Microelectronics (LIRMM) in Montpellier (France), she joined Ekium company as an Automation Engineer. Since 2015, she has been associated professor at the Laboratoire de Génie Electrique et Ferroélectricité (LGEF, France). Her research interests broadly involve the areas of multiphysique coupling (electromechanics, magnetoelectrics, magnetothermics) based on electroactive materials. Specially, she focusses on characterization of sensor and actuator systems, development of 3D/4D printing additive manufacturing, and structuration of smart composites under electric/magnetic field.

In the Live-Mirror project, Dr. Le is contributing to the analysis of electrical and electromechanical signatures for the analysis of structure ageing and the identification of areas for optimization in terms of materials and systems.

With a background in materials science, he graduated in late 2023 from the École Européenne d’Ingénieurs en Génie des Matériaux (EEIGM, Nancy). His end-of-studies internship was performed during 13 months at the European Space Agency (ESA), where he investigated the manufacturing of a fully thermal-evaporated solar cell on the Lunar surface. Since November, he is a Ph.D student at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) de Lyon in the LGEF Laboratory. Developing soft electroactive polymers as part of the WP3 in the Live-Mirror project, his work aims at optimizing the actuators’ materials properties through fundamental research, varied syntheses, 4D-printing and characterization campaigns. The electromechanical response of plasticized terpolymers’ and their printability constitutes a major challenge for strong, reliable and repeatable morphing control. A close collaboration with the other work packages and the sharing of the last works through various conferences are also part of his missions.

Claude Richard received a M.S. degree in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. degree in acoustics from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (INSA Lyon), France, in 1988 and 1992, respectively. After a postdoctoral study on 1.3 piezocomposite materials at the Naval Research Laboratory (Underwater Sound Reference Detachment in Orlando) in 1993, he got a position at INSA de Lyon where he is working since 1994 on the applications of piezoelectric ceramics and more generally coupled materials and systems.

He contributed to many research projects related to underwater or medical ultrasound and more generally transducer development in relation with piezoelectric materials. In the field of Smart Structures, he contributed directly to the development of non-linear Synchronized switch Damping techniques and the many related developments in structural vibration damping or energy harvesting applications.

He is currently full time Professor of electrical engineering at INSA Lyon where he manages the Laboratoire de Génie Electrique et Ferroélectricité (LGEF). His research interests include smart-structures, piezocomposites, acoustic transducer, piezoelectric and coupled material characterization.