Damien Rontani received the Supélec Foundation Prize for his Ph.D. research entitled "Communication with Chaotic Optoelectronic Systems - Cryptography and Multiplexing." Now an alumnus of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), he was the first student to complete the dual Ph.D. program between Georgia Tech and Supélec and graduated in December 2011 in Atlanta.

Dr. Rontani's advisors were David Citrin (ECE at Georgia Tech and Georgia Tech-Lorraine) and Marc Sciamanna (Supélec). His research consisted of studying complex behaviors emerging in optoelectronic components. Chaotic behaviors exhibit noise-like features, thus making them highly desirable for private communications at the physical layer of networks, and also for the generation of random numbers used in various fields, such as computer simulations or the generation of binary keys for cryptographic applications.

After graduation, Dr. Rontani began work as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at Duke University.