Antoine Bérut, doctor at the ENS de Lyon, has been awarded the 2015 Saint-Gobain prize. Under the authority of the French Physical Society, this award is attributed to promising young researchers. “The significance of the research topic, the quality and originality of the findings and the clarity of the presentation were the main criteria used to distinguish him as the laureate of this prize,” said Michel Spiro, president of the FPS.

Key publication in 2012
On March 8, 2012, the journal Nature published an article titled “Experimental verification of Landauer's principle linking information and thermodynamics,” on the first ever measure of the energy needed for a computer bit. Among the authors were Antoine Bérut and his thesis directors, Sergio Ciliberto and Artem Petrosvan. By December, that publication was considered one of the 10 major scientific advances of the year 2012.

His resume
Antoine Bérut worked on his thesis under the direction of Artem Petrosvan and Sergio Ciliberto, of the physics laboratory at the ENS de Lyon, from 2012 to 2015. He will be invited to present his work at the official award ceremony, early in 2017.
This former doctoral student at the ENS de Lyon is currently pursuing a post-doc in Marseille at the Institut universitaire des systèmes thermiques industriels (CNRS/Univ. Aix-Marseille), where he studies issues of gravity detection in plants (gravitropism).
It’s also worth noting that Antoine Bérut was a scientific role model for Chain Reaction, an EU project aimed at promoting a sustainable approach to teaching inquiry based science education (IBSE), in order to tackle the lack of interest of youths for scientific studies.