Professor Frédéric Dias from University College Dublin appeared as a guest at the Interdisciplinary Scientific Seminar. He delivered a lecture entitled "The fascination of ocean waves"

Prof. Frederic Dias received a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, in 1986. He started his career in the US before coming back to France to join CNRS in 1990. In 2000, he moved to Ecole normale supérieure Paris–Saclay and has been a Professor of Applied Mathematics since. In 2009, he went to University College Dublin (UCD) on leave to work on wave energy converters. He is now leading the wave group at UCD. In 2012, he received an advanced grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to work on extreme wave events. In 2014, he received a proof of concept grant from the ERC to work on wave measurement. In 2019, he received a second advanced grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to work on wave breaking.

Prof. Frédéric Dias was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2016, of the Academy of Europe in 2017 and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2019.

In 2014, Prof. Frédéric Dias has been awarded the Emilia Valori prize for applications of science by the French Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Frédéric Dias is co-chief editor of the European Journal of Mechanics B/Fluids and has been Secretary General of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) from 2008 to 2016.