Marie-Paule Pileni

Marie-Paule Pileni is a French physical chemist who was born in Tananarive, Madagascar. She is a distinguished professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) and a Senior Member, since 1999, and administrator (2004–2011) of the Institut Universitaire de France, IUF. She is the daughter of Christophe Pileni, chief administrator of French Overseas possessions and Marie-Pasquine Micheletti, President of the Red Cross. She studied, from 1961 to 1966, at the Maison d'éducation de la Légion d'honneur then at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (1967–1969) and at the Université Paris-Sud 11 (1970–1972). There she obtained an honors degree in physical chemistry (1968), a Ph.D (1969) and a D.Sc. (1977). She became a demonstrator (1969–1974), assistant lecturer (1974–1983), associate professor (1983–1990) then full professor (1990–1997) and finally distinguished professor. She was director, between 1996 and 2000, of the Structure and Reactivity of Interfaces Laboratory (SRI), a Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) joint unit. Since 2004, she has been a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology at Atlanta. In 2000, she created the Laboratoire des Matériaux Mésoscopiques et Nanométriques (LM2N). Along with her research work in addition, to being administrator (2004–2010) of the Institut Universitaire de France IUF, she was Auditor (1987–88) of the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale, IHEDN, Auditor (1989), of the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Européenne and (1990–91) of the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Sécurité Intérieure.