Leonardo TRUJILLO

Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics

Soyez les bienvenus

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👤 Who am I?

I’m Leo Trujillo, a Venezuelan 🇻🇪 scientist trained as a theoretical physicist at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV). I earned my PhD at the École Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI) and Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) (now Sorbonne Université), under the supervision of Prof. Hans J. Herrmann. Later, I also pursued postgraduate studies in psychology at Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB).

🏛️ My early career took me to the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, as a Junior Associate. For 15 years, I worked at the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), where I directed the Laboratory of Fluid and Plasma Physics and served as Deputy Head of the Physics Center. Sadly, the severe degradation of IVIC eventually forced me to resign, as conditions to continue doing science in Venezuela had vanished [1,2,3].

🌐 I have been a visiting scientist in France 🇫🇷 (ENS, Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Hautes Energies, Genopole, Laboratoire de probabilités et modèles aléatoires,Université Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée), Spain 🇪🇸 (Universidad de Barcelona, Universidad de Navarra), the Netherlands 🇳🇱 (TU Delft), Germany 🇩🇪 (Universität Stuttgart), and Mexico 🇲🇽 (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica, Laboratorio de Matemáticas Aplicadas y Cómputo de Alto Rendimiento, CINVESTAV).

🎓 At IVIC, I coordinated the graduate program in physics, while also teaching at UCV’s postgraduate program. Over the years, I have mentored numerous PhD, master’s, and undergraduate students in science and engineering. Beyond the classroom, I am deeply committed to science communication: I have given public talks, participated in radio and TV interviews, and contributed to educational content for television. Notably, I took part in the award-winning TV program Cerefritos, which received recognition from the Public Television Stations of Latin America (TAL Awards).

🛫 In 2019, I moved to France—exile might be a better word—where I became a Visiting Professor at INSA Lyon (LIRIS lab). Since then, I have collaborated with the Beagle team and later joined Inria Lyon as an associate researcher. As of 2024, I was part of the AIstroSight Team at the Inria Center in Lyon, working with Hugues Berry on theoretical models of neuronal plasticity, bringing in my background in mathematical physics.

🔆 From September 2025, I am an Associate Professor at the Institute national des sciences appliquées de Lyon (INSA). I teach mathematical modeling in the Department of Biotechnology and bioinformatics, and I conduct my research within the M2E Team (Microbiology of Extreme Environments) at the Laboratory of Microbiology, Adaptation and Pathogenesis (MAP) – UMR-5240.

I also remain associated with the AIstroSight Team as a collaborateur extérieur.

📖 My academic motto is simple: “Per investigationem disce”

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🎶 Beyond Academia

Outside the lab, I’m a lifelong drummer, passionate about rhythm and improvisation. I also explore chromatic composition, and I’m obsessed with the clear expression of ideas—whether spoken, written, or played on an instrument.

Pero, por encima de todo, los papeles más importantes en mi vida son ser hijo de Ligia, padre de Santiago y Matías, y ahora, construir una nueva familia junto a Natalia y su hijo Andrés. Vivo según el lema de los Mosqueteros: “Un pour tous, tous pour un.”

✨ Una de mis filosofías de vida: “Los sueños son la creación del soñador.”

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One of my favorite scientific articles is Exponents for excluded volume problem as derived by Wilson method. Phys. Lett. A 38, 339 (1972), by Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, on the famous “n=0 trick”. In just a little over one page, he manages to connect polymer statistics with the critical theories of magnetic systems, showing that a self-avoiding polymer chain could be described using the tools of statistical field physics and the renormalization group. What fascinates me is the simplicity with which de Gennes builds an unexpected conceptual bridge, where the messy and seemingly disordered world of polymers is illuminated by the mathematical elegance of spin models. That ability to condense results of enormous theoretical sophistication into a clear presentation is, for me, a true example of what it means to do physics with depth, imagination, and at the same time with an open spirit toward experimentalists.

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My Erdős number is 4