Olivier Bernard was born in Lyon, France, in 1968. He received an Engineering degree from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon together with a Master's degree in Control Science in 1992. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in Biological Oceanography from Sorbonne University (Paris VI) in 1995. From 1996 to 1998, he was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Systems Engineering and Applied Mechanics (CESAME), UCL, Belgium. Since 1999, he has worked as a Senior Research Scientist at the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA), in the BIOCORE research team (Modeling and Control of Artificial Ecosystems).