About

Thirty years turning the invisible underground into solutions for our time

I have spent more than three decades asking a single question: how can the ground beneath our feet address the greatest challenges of our time? Born in North Africa, educated in France, and based in Switzerland, my work has always been global in scope and grounded in the conviction that geotechnical engineering is a field of immense, underexplored potential.

I joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) as a research fellow in 1994, was appointed Professor in 2006, and have directed the Laboratory of Soil Mechanics since 2008. From 2012 to 2022, I led the Civil Engineering Section, overseeing 600 students and 120 faculty members while maintaining the department's position in the QS Top 10 globally.

My research addresses four interconnected challenges: harnessing renewable energy from underground infrastructure, permanently sequestering CO2 in deep geological formations, ensuring the safety of nuclear waste repositories over millennia, and engineering soils using nature's own chemistry. This work has produced 13 books, over 400 peer-reviewed articles, and more than 20,000 citations.

Beyond EPFL, I serve as President of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), elected at the 21st International Conference in Vienna in June 2026. I am an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences and the Academia Europaea, and have held visiting professorships at Duke, Northwestern, King Abdulaziz, and Hohai universities.

My commitment to impact extends beyond academia. I have founded five startups, including Enerdrape - a geothermal energy company ranked in the Swiss Top 100 for three consecutive years - MeduSoil, which applies bio-cementation technology to real-world construction challenges, and Nesol, providing advanced numerical engineering solutions for geomechanics.

I have mentored over 50 PhD students and trained generations of geotechnical engineers, many of whom now hold influential positions in academia, industry, and government worldwide.