Remi Monasson

Also known as Rémi Monasson

Rémi Monasson is a theoretical physicist who uses statistical physics to study learning, combinatorial optimization and the modeling of proteins. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure and completed a doctorate at Paris VI in 1993 under Marc Mézard on the statistical physics of neural networks. His 1999 Nature paper with Riccardo Zecchina and colleagues solved the phase transition in K-satisfiability, and he later published on restricted Boltzmann machines in 2017 and on protein families in eLife in 2019. Honours include the CNRS Bronze Medal in 1997, the Lecomte prize in 2004 and the Paul Langevin prize in 2008, and he was deputy director of the Institut Henri Poincaré from 2018 to 2020. He is a CNRS research director at the Laboratoire de physique de l'ENS, a professor at École Polytechnique and an ELLIS Fellow.

Now at: École Normale Supérieure, École Polytechnique and Henri Poincaré Institute
Works: 299
Citations: 7,186
h-index: 39
Badges: Wayfarer
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Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

1993

A neural-network doctorate

He prepares in classes préparatoires in Strasbourg and then studies at the École Normale Supérieure in the mathematics section. In 1993, he completes a doctorate at Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (Paris VI) under Marc Mézard, with a thesis on the statistical physics of neural networks, spatial correlations and learning.
1997–1999

Phase transitions in satisfiability

CNRS awards him its Bronze Medal in 1997. His 1997 arXiv paper on finite-connectivity spin glasses applies replica symmetry breaking to the random 3-Satisfiability problem, and in 1999 Nature publishes his paper with Riccardo Zecchina, Scott Kirkpatrick, Bart Selman and Lidror Troyansky on the phase transition in K-satisfiability, an NP-complete problem.
2004–2008

Lecomte and Langevin prizes

The Académie des sciences gives him its Lecomte prize in 2004. The Société française de physique awards him its Paul Langevin prize for theoretical physics in 2008.
2009–2011

Senior member at the IAS

From 2009 to 2011, he is a senior member of the Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
2017–2018

Compositional features in Boltzmann machines

In 2017, he and Jérôme Tubiana publish a Physical Review Letters paper on the emergence of compositional representations in restricted Boltzmann machines, tested on random RBMs and on MNIST handwritten digits. With Simona Cocco, Christoph Feinauer, Matteo Figliuzzi and Martin Weigt, he posts a review of inverse statistical physics for protein sequences in 2017, published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2018.
2018–2020

Deputy director of the IHP

He is deputy director of the Institut Henri Poincaré from 2018 to 2020. In that role he drives changes in the institute's scientific strategy that give a place to emerging fields of physics research.
2019–2020

Protein models with Boltzmann machines

In 2019, he, Jérôme Tubiana and Simona Cocco show in eLife that restricted Boltzmann machines model protein families from sequence data and can design new sequences. In 2020, a Science paper from his laboratory, with him and Simona Cocco as corresponding authors, designs natural-like chorismate mutase enzymes from evolutionary sequence data.
As of October 2026

CNRS director and ELLIS Fellow

He is a CNRS research director at the Laboratoire de physique de l'École normale supérieure in Paris, a professor at École Polytechnique and an ELLIS Fellow in the Paris unit. His research lines include the statistical physics of learning in neural nets and high-dimensional inference applied to biological data.