Gabriel Ruget was born in 1944 in Albi. After being schooled at the lycee Blaise Pascal, in Clermont-Ferrand, he entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1962 where he studies physics and mathematics. In 1969, he completed his doctoral dissertation in mathematics at Paris XI-Orsay University, and the same year was appointed as a professor at the University of Tunis. He joined Paris VII University in 1971, then in 1975 held a chair at Rennes I University, and then in 1977 at Paris XI.

During this period, he was in particular head of IRISA, a CNRS lab devoted to research in software and automatic control, which became then the INRIA’s Rennes establishment, then Vice-president for research and doctoral studies in the Orsay center of the Paris XI university. He conducted and ran research in pure mathematics (geometry) up to 1974, then in information processing (signal processing, adaptive systems, control of stochastic processes).

In 1983, he joined Thomson-CSF where he was to work for sixteen years, holding various positions of Head of Programmes or Vice-President in charge of research in several of the compagny’s divisions or subsidiaries (telecommunications, avionics, defence and control systems, simulation, optronics). He was part of the IHEDN 1990 year group. He was Deputy Head of R&D for Thomson-CSF, in charge of « software and systems », from 1991 to 1993, and took part in several trans-national industrial operations.

In 1999, he returned to the public sector as scientific director of ENS-Cachan, where two yars earlier he has founded and chaired an Institute of Sciences for Engineering. At the same time, he took charge of the Paris Robotics Laboratory, with a particular interest in themes such as virtual reality, cognitive aspects of man-machine interfaces, and biomedical instrumentation.

He was appointed a member of the National Council of Sciences, the National Council Coordinating Human and Social Sciences and the National Space Studies Centre’s Scientific Programmes Committeee.

Gabriel Ruget has been Director of the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris rue d’Ulm, from October 2000 until October 2005. He is now with the Centre de recherches sur les Arts et le langage.