François Baccelli winner of the Blackwell 2024 Prize
16 January 2025
The Blackwell Prize of the INFORMS Applied Probability Society, established in 2023, is awarded annually at the INFORMS annual meeting to an individual for fundamental and lasting contributions over the course of his or her career in the field of applied probability.
François Baccelli has been a leading figure in the field of applied probability and communications for several decades. Author of five influential books and over 200 research articles, he has significantly advanced not only the theory of applied probability, stochastic geometry and dynamical systems, but also their applications to communications systems, notably wireless networks and Internet traffic. Among his notable contributions are pioneering work on spatial stochastic networks, with applications notably in the design of satellite constellations and non-terrestrial networks, on the elucidation of the links between Palm probabilities and queuing theory, with major impacts on methodologies for evaluating the performance of communication systems and the advancement of the theory of stochastic networks.
In addition, his development of the max-plus algebraic approach offered valuable insights into the modeling and analysis of discrete-event systems, further consolidating his role as a leading innovator in his field and enabling, in particular, the design of systems respecting strict latency constraints.
François Baccelli has also made numerous contributions to the field, creating distinct research groups over the years, training a whole generation of post-graduate students, many of whom are now established professors embarking in multiple directions, and organizing numerous research conferences in these areas. In the words of one of the nomination letters,
Although the Blackwell Prize is an individual award, it is in a spirit of teamwork and collaboration that François Baccelli works on a daily basis. The award is recognition by his peers of his efforts to develop collaborative research structures such as the LINCS joint laboratory, which he co-founded with Prof. Daniel Kofman (Télécom Paris), and which brings together researchers from IMT, INRIA, Nokia Bell Labs, Sorbonne University and SystemX.
Biography
François Baccelli graduated from Télécom Paris (then École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications) in 1977 and obtained his PhD at the Université Paris-Sud in 1983 under the supervision of Erol Gelenbe. He is an Inria research director and a visiting professor at Télécom Paris. He is currently in charge of the ERC advanced NEMO project on the dynamics of large-scale networks. He has held the Simons Math+ECE Chair at UT Austin, USA. He is a co-founder of LINCS.
His research lies at the interface between mathematics and communications. His mathematical work focuses on point processes, random graphs and stochastic geometry on the one hand, and network dynamics on the other. His main contributions in the field of communications are centered on information theory, congestion control and cellular network modeling.
François Baccelli received the ACM Sigmetrics Achievement Award 2014, the IEEE Rice and Abraham awards in 2014 and the Grand Prix France Télécom 2002. He is Doctor Honoris Causa of Heriot-Watt University and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.