A Summer's day in the Indian Himalayas

A Short Biography

I was born and grew up in the same city than the World Wide Web, ie Geneva, in Switzerland. By nature, I am what people like to call a "geek" or a "tech nerd" and, by training, I am a quantitative engineer and a microeconomist. I'm currently a 3rd year DPhil (read PhD) student at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, where I research the formation of reputation and trust in online economies. To be brief, one could say that I like to analyse and model how humans and machines "work" together.

Prior to reading for a doctorate at the University of Oxford1, I was a student at the École Polytechnique2, Palaiseau, France, where I accomplished both a Masters in Quantitative Economics and Finance jointly organized by the Department of Applied Mathematics and the Department of Economics at the École Polytechnique, and the Department of Economics and Finance at HEC Paris3, and a research-oriented Masters in Economic Analysis and Policy housed by the Paris School of Economics and the École Normale Supérieure4, Ulm.

I also hold a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Lausanne, Faculty of HEC, Switzerland, a Diploma in Economics from the University of Kent, UK, and I am a former Microengineering student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne.

[1] Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world and consistently ranks in the world's top universities. ?

[2] The Ecole Polytechnique is the most prestigious educational establishment in France and is dedicated to educating students in Science and Technology at the highest level. ?

[3] HEC Paris is ranked as the 1st Business School in Europe since 2006 by the Financial Times. ?

[4] The ENS is widely considered to be the most selective and most challenging institution of higher learning and research in France. ?

My life as a geek started in 1991 with the Game Boy I received for Christmas :). In 1993, my parents bought what is considered as the first true notebook ever produced, a Compaq LTE, and so the first operating system I used was a Windows MS-DOS 3.31. A few years later, I wrote my first line of code on a machine running Windows 95, it was a simple HTML page. My first program was a simulation of a predator-prey ecosystem written in C.

I'm now an experienced hacker and an open source converted / preacher whose works are led by a strong taste for perfection and a sound love for cutting-edge solutions. I'm fluent in PHP, Python, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS(3), HTML(5) and I have a good knowledge of C and Java. Languages on my current to-do list are Go, Scala and Clojure.

I have worked in the past as a freelance developer and web-designer and I'm (currently) the creator and sole developer of Google+ widget and Gmelius™.

Scatcherd European Scholarship

, University of Oxford, 2009–2012

The Scatcherd European Scholarships are funded by an extremely generous benefaction from the late Mrs Jane Ledig-Rowohlt (nee Scatcherd), widow of the German publisher, Mr Heinrich Ledig-Rowohlt. These awards, set up in 1993, are open to all European nationals, and are awarded on the basis of outstanding academic merit.

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) studentship

, United Kingdom, 2009–2012

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funds research and training in social and economic issues. I have been granted a three year award for my DPhil at Oxford.

Best Research Thesis of the Year (X2005)

, École Polytechnique, November 2008

Award known in French as "Prix d'Option Scientifique". Awarded Paper: "Education in Rural India, Perspective from a North-Indian Village". Paper written during the research project "Economics Development of Palanpur over Six Decades". Project supervised by Professor Nicholas Stern (LSE), Dr. Peter Lanjouw (World Bank) and Professor Himanshu (JNU).

Research Scholarship

, École Polytechnique, 2007–2009

A scholarship for students at the École Polytechnique who intend to enter research programmes.

Erasmus Scholarship

, Swiss Confederation