Cour des Comptes (French Supreme Court of Audit)
Adviser to the President of the École polytechnique, Paris
Former General Director of CNRS, France

Arnold Migus is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique, received a master's degree in Pure Mathematics in 1972, and a doctorate in Physics in 1977. He worked the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) as a research associate from 1973 to 1977 and then at Bell Labs in the United States from 1978 to 1979. Upon his return to France, he joined the Ecole Polytechnique's Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée (LOA) as a researcher (1979 to 1983), and then CNRS (in 1983) before being promoted to senior researcher at CNRS in 1985. After a visiting researcher position at the University of Michigan in 1994, he returned to France to direct the Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses from 1996 to 2003. He then became director of the Institut d'Optique.  He also founded the Institut Lasers et Plasmas in Bordeaux.Arnold Migus is a specialist of lasers and their applications (in optics, physics, chemistry, astronomy), especially femtosecond lasers and ultrafast and ultraintense laser science. He is also interested in the use of lasers and physics in thermonuclear fusion, in artificial stars, and wave propagation in a random medium. He has published more than 130 articles in international refereed journals. He was a member of the National Committee of Scientific Research from 1995 to 2005, and chaired the board of the Engineering Sciences department from 2000 to 2001. He has been on the scientific advisory board of the Ministry of Defense since 1998. As a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, he is Topical Editor for Optics Letters. From 2006 until 2010 Migus was Director General of CNRS, and served as vice president of both the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the European Heads of Research Councils (EUROHORCS) from 2008 until 2010.