Full Professor of Computer Science at ESILV, De Vinci Higher Education (Pôle Léonard de Vinci), Paris La Défense

Nicolas Travers is Full Professor of Computer Science at ESILV Engineering School at Paris la Défense. Nicolas is deputy director of the DVRC laboratory. He was habilitated (HDR) in Computer Science from Sorbonne University in 2018. His main topics deal with database management and optimization. He is specialized in distributed databases, graph databases, Information Retrieval and recommendation systems. He particularly specialized in ad hoc databases design in a transdisciplinary approach: Digital Tourism & Geography, Knowledge Management & History, IR & Musicology or Multimodal libraries.

• Deputy Director of the DVRC Laboratory & Full Professor at ESILV
• Associate Researcher of CEDRIC Laboratory, Cnam
  Member of the Cedric Lab Council, since 2023
• Teacher in Advanced Databases in the « Data and AI » major at ESILV

Scientific Program Committees: CIKM, EDBT, ECAI, RCIS, DEXA, ApWeb-WAIM, ADMA, BDA, EGC, DBKDA, AIMS, DATAK, ICTO, BDA-MDD (Summer school)
State Expert: CIR (since 2015), NSERC (since 2022), ANR (2018-2020)

Research

DB Design, Distributed DB, Graph DB, Information Retrieval, Optimization of Ad-Hoc Databases (HDR). [My publications]

Database Design & Optimization – Ad-hoc & distributed databases

• Distributed DB
  • NoSQL Optimization – Distributed databases optimisation with denormalization: Schema denormalization, multi data-model cost model, environmental impact/IS Carbon Footprint [Thesis of Jihane Mali – DVRC/ISEP]
  • Document Management Systems – Multi-criteria Data Manipulation, Virtual File System [Project: FUI Polymathic, Thesis by Emilian Pascalau]
  • DB Mediator – Distributed Querying of Semi-structured Documents: TGV: XQuery & Mediation [My thesis]
• Ad-hoc DB
  • Column Oriented DB – T-Plotter: Indexing system for vertical fragmentation [Thesis by Hicheme Chaalal – Co-supervision with USTO]
  • Musical Scores DB
    • Musical Scores & Time Series [Projects: Neuma, GioQoSo, Polyfonia, Scorelib]
    • XQuery & Score Manipulation: ScoreQL [Projects: ANR Neuma, ANR MuNiR]
    • Ontology for Musical Notation (OWL/RDF/SWRL annotation generation)

Graph Database Modeling & Optimization

• Digital Tourism
  • Circulation Graphs – Neo4Tourism: Tourist Circulation (Spatio-temporal Aggregation & Centrality) [Postdoc – Hugo Alatrista-Salas & ESILV Research Track students]
  • Pattern Mining [Internships by Nicolas Loas, Ugo Quehlas, Hugo Prevoteau, Muhamad Zain Abas, Koumudi Yasara Ganepola Achchige – Research contracts with Bordeaux and Metropole Européenne de Lille]
• Knowledge Graphs
  • SceneGraphs – Scene Graph modeling and Violence detection [PhD thesis of Pierre Lefebvre, DVRC/AID]
  • LLM & SDG – SDG modeling and SDG indicators computation over Open Data [PhD thesis of Wissal Benjira, DVRC/IGN]
  • LLM & Knowledge Graphs – LLM & Knowledge graph for User Stories Tests integration [PhD thesis of Marius Ortega, Onepoint]
• Graph Databa Modeling
  • Multiplex Graphs – Similarity between Multi-layer Graphs for Technological Watch [Thesis by Foutse Yuehgoh – Research Chair with Coexel]
  • Social Networks – Social Network Recommendation, Meta-Graph for Twitter, Breaking Information Bubbles [Thesis by Quentin Grossetti – ED SMI]
  • RTB – Real-time Bidding, Real-time Influence Maximization [Thesis by David Dupuis – Research Chair with Kwanko]

Information Retrieval

• IR & Score Similarities – Search Engine for Musical Notation, Elasticsearch & Musical Similarity [Related to Tiange Zhu’s thesis – H2020 Polyfonia, CNRS DEFI MASTODONS GioQoSo]
• IR & DL – Textual Document Extension by Embedding & Document Fragmentation (Elasticsearch) [Thesis by Oussama Ayoub – Research Chair with SevilleMoreHelory]

Real-time Data Stream Filtering

• PubSub – Publish/Subscribe, Stream Algebra [Theses by Jordi Creus Tomas and Zeinah Hmedeh – ANR RoSeS]

Teaching

Database Optimization

• Storage, Indexing, Optimizer, Query Tuning
• CentraleSupelec (M2&Exed), CNAM (NFE106, FIP2)

Databases Fundamentals

• Modeling, Relational Algebra, SQL, PL-SQL, Triggers, Concurrency, JDBC/ODBC
• CentraleSupelec (M1&Exed), ESILV (A3), CNAM (NFP107, FIP1 BDD)

Advanced Databases

• NoSQL (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Neo4j, Cassandra)
• Graph DB & Graph Mining (Advanced Neo4j)
• Data Distribution and Cloud (MapReduce, Spark, DHT, HDFS, Mediation)
• XML (DTD, XPath, XQuery)
• Information Retrieval (Text Indexing/Elasticsearch, Similarities, top-k, PageRank, Relevance/Feedback)
• Polytechnique (M2DS), CentraleSupelec (SIO&M2&Exed), ESILV (DIA A4&5), ESSEC Business School, Dauphine (M2 MIAGE IF), CNAM (NFE2024)

Institutions

• Polytechnique (M2 Data Science in partnership with ESILV and others): Data Infrastructure
• CentraleSupelec (Lecturer since 2012):  Ingé2, Ingé3 OSY : parcours ITP & SI, Mastère SIO, Mastère TM, EXED
• ESSEC Business School** (Lecturer since 2017): Mastère DataScience
• ESILV
  • Permanent 2018 – Present: Advanced topics in NoSQL (S7), Cloud Data Infrastructure (S8), Graph Mining (S8)
  • Lecturer 2007-2018: introduction au NoSQL (S7), développement d’application Cloud (S9), Recherche d’Information sur le Web (S9 – terminé en 2013), SQL avancé+PL/SQL
• Paris-Dauphine (Lecturer 2015-2017): M2 MIAGE IF Dauphine
• UMPC – Jussieu (Lecturer 2008-2013): Master SAR, GRBD
• Sorbonne (Lecturer 2008-2009): L3 Databases
• University of Cergy-Pontoise (ATER 2006-2007): Programming in Caml, Databases, XML
• UVSQ (University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines) (Lecturer 2003-2006): XML, Databases, Data Distribution

Academic Experience

• Since 2018: ESILV – Full Professor of Computer Science, Paris La Défense
  • Since 2023: Deputy Director of DVRC Lab
  • 2018 – 2022: Head of the Digital Research Group at the DVRC Laboratory
  • Secondment from public service for 10 years (2018-2028)
  • Since 2024: Member of the CEDRIC Laboratory Council (Cnam)
• 2018: Science Sorbonne Universities – Habilitation to Direct Research  (HDR)
• 2007-2018: CNAM Senior Lecturer in Computer Science Paris, Vertigo team of Cedric Lab
  • 2017-2021: Elected Full Member of the Computer Science Department at CNAM
  • 2014-2018: Elected Full Member of the CNAM Training Council & Resource Allocation Commission
  • 2012-2018: Elected Alternate Member of the CEDRIC Laboratory Council
  • 2010-2014: Elected Full Member of the CNAM Board of Directors
  • 2009-2018: Mission for CEDRIC: Web Communication Manager
• 2006: UVSQ – PhD in Computer Science, PRiSM Laboratory, University of Versailles, France (PhD thesis)
  • Directed by Georges Gardarin, co-advised by Tram Dang-Ngoc Nguyen
  • 2003-2006: Elected Student Member of the Scientific Council at UVSQ
• 2003: UVSQ – DEA MISI (Computer Methods for Industrial Systems), University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France