Professor Sylvie Méléard is a distinguished mathematician and Professor of Applied Mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique, France, where she also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. As Head of the Mathematical Modeling and Biodiversity Chair since 2009, she fosters interdisciplinary collaborations between mathematicians and biologists. Her expertise in probability theory, stochastic processes, and measure-valued processes drives her research on population dynamics, evolutionary ecology, bacterial biology, and hematology. Leading the PEIPS research group at the Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées (CMAP), she is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced SINGER project, exploring stochastic dynamics of single cells, and the ITMO Cancer Aviesan-Inserm project on myeloproliferative neoplasms.

Professor Méléard’s academic journey began at the Ecole normale supérieure de Fontenay-aux-Roses (1977–1981), followed by her agregation in mathematics (1981) and a doctorate from Pierre and Marie Curie University (1984). She earned her habilitation in 1991 and held professorships at the Paris Nanterre University before joining Ecole Polytechnique in 2006. She has authored influential books, including Stochastic Models for Structured Populations, with Vincent Bansaye (2015) and Modèles aléatoires en écologie et évolution (2016).
Her contributions have earned her prestigious accolades, including the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize for Woman Scientist of the Year (2024) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Medallion Lecture (2023). 

Education

•    Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, Pierre and Marie Curie University (1991)
•    PhD Thesis, Pierre and Marie Curie University (1984)
•    Agrégation of Mathematics, France (1981)
•    Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-aux-Roses, France (1977–1981)

Experience

•    Professor of Applied Mathematics, Ecole Polytechnique (2006–present)
•    Chair of the Applied Mathematics Department, Ecole Polytechnique. (2010–2014)
•    Professor, University Paris-Ouest, Nanterre (1992–2006)
•    Maître de Conférences, University Pierre et Marie Curie (1989–1992)
•    Maître-Assistante, University of Le Mans (1984–1989)

Awards and Honors

•    Chevalier de la légion d’honneur (2013)
•    "La Recherche" Award (2013)
•    Alan Tayler lecture, ECMI (2014)
•    Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (2018)
•    Senior Member of Institut Universitaire de France (2019-2024)
•    Fellow of the Academia Europaea 
•    Foreign Corresponding Member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences (2021)
•    Sectional Invited Speaker, ICM 2022 (St Petersburg) (2022)
•    IMS Medallion Lecture, INFORMS Applied Probability Conference (2023)
•    Irène Joliot-Curie Award - Femme scientifique de l'année (2024)

Five Significant Scholarly Outputs

1.    A scenario for an evolutionary selection of ageing, T. Roget, C. MacMurray, P. Jolivet, S. Méléard, M. Rera. eLife (2024), Evolutionary Biology.
2.    Filling the gap between individual-based evolutionary models and Hamilton-Jacobi equations, N. Champagnat, S. Méléard, S. Mirrahimi, C.V. Tran. Journal de l'Ecole polytechnique- Mathématiques, Tome 10 (2023), p. 1247-1275. https://doi.org/10.5802/jep.244
3.    Sharp asymptotics for the quasi-stationary distribution of birth-and-death processes, J.R. Chazottes, P. Collet, S. Méléard. Probab. Theory Related Fields. 164 (2016), no. 1-2, 285-332.
4.    Stochastic eco-evolutionary model of a prey-predator community, Manon Costa, Céline Hauzy, Nicolas Loeuille, S. Méléard. J. Math. Biol. J. Math. Biol. 72 (2016), no. 3, 573-622.
5.    Polymorphic evolution sequence and evolutionary branching, N. Champagnat, S. Méléard. Probab. Theory Related Fields, Volume 151, Issue 1 (2011), 45–94.