Engineering degree from French "Ecole Polytechnique (Paris)", 1982; Colonel, French Air Force; test pilot; from 61 European candidates for the ESA 1991 selection one of six French candidates (and on the shortlist of 25 candidate applicants), but not selected then; under a special agreement between NASA and CNES assigned to train at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as a mission specialist in 1995; became an ESA Astronaut in December 2002; hobbies: Scuba diving, skiing, sailing, hiking, traveling, history of sciences; returned to European Astronaut Center, later an active ESA astronaut; in May 2004 he joined Airbus Industry in Toulouse to become an experimental test pilot.