Max Fathi

Max Fathi is a Professor of Mathematics at Université Paris Cité, affiliated with the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions (LJLL) and Laboratoire de Probabilités, Statistique et Modélisation (LPSM). He concurrently holds a part-time teaching position at the Department of Mathematics and Applications (DMA) at École Normale Supérieure (ENS). Since 2023, he has been a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), a prestigious national research fellowship in France.

He completed his PhD in 2013 at Université Pierre et Marie Curie under Cédric Villani, followed by a postdoctoral position at the University of California, Berkeley with Lawrence C. Evans and Fraydoun Rezakhanlou. Previously, he was a CNRS researcher at the Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse before joining Université Paris Cité. His habilitation thesis (2019) focuses on optimal transport applications in analysis and probability.

Fathi's research centers on optimal transport theory, particularly its applications to analysis, probability, and statistical physics. Key topics include interacting particle systems, functional inequalities (e.g., Poincaré, log-Sobolev), high-dimensional phenomena, Ricci curvature in discrete/continuous spaces, Stein's method, concentration of measure, and numerical methods for stochastic dynamics. His work is supported by the ANR project 'Conviviality.'

He has delivered courses on functional analysis at ENS and participated in summer schools, including an MSRI course on functional inequalities and localization techniques. His teaching materials include lecture notes on optimal transport and stochastic processes.

His contributions have been recognized through awards such as the IUF membership. Notable research collaborations include work with Thomas Courtade, Matthias Erbar, and Gabriel Stoltz on topics ranging from stability estimates of inequalities to hypocoercivity and numerical analysis of stochastic systems.