Tangente: As a mathematician, how did you come to head the R&D department of a multinational such as Huawei?**
M.D.: I entered the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay [formerly ENS Cachan] in 1996. In 1999, I began a doctorate on free probability theory applied to wireless transmission systems. I completed this doctoral research in an industrial setting with Motorola Labs, then located on the Saclay plateau in Essonne. It was an extremely rewarding experience, especially as telecommunications was enjoying its golden age.
In 2002, following the telecom bubble, I moved to Vienna, Austria, to work as a senior researcher at FTW (Telecommunication Research Center Vienna) on MIMO telecommunications systems—wireless transmission systems equipped with multiple antennas. At the time, I worked on electromagnetic modelling and propagation measurement campaigns, at the interface between physics and information theory.
The following year, I joined the Mobile Communications Department at Eurecom in Sophia Antipolis (Alpes-Maritimes) as an assistant professor, launching my academic career. It was a unique, internationally oriented environment that brought together the world's leading experts and combined theory with applications. I was fortunate enough to continue my theoretical research, using random matrix theory to study the fundamental limits of wireless transmission, while also working on game-theoretic algorithmic techniques for self-organizing systems.
