Phd Position F/m Authoring Interactive Public Science Lectures

Le descriptif de l’offre ci-dessous est en Anglais_ **Type de contrat**: CDD **Niveau de diplôme exigé**: Bac + 5 ou équivalent **Fonction**: Doctorant **A propos du centre ou de la direction fonctionnelle**: The Inria Saclay-Île-de-France Research Centre was established in 2008. It has developed as part of the Saclay site in partnership with **Paris-Saclay University** and with the **Institut Polytechnique de Paris**. The centre has 40** project teams**, 27 of which operate jointly with Paris-Saclay University and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Its activities occupy over 600 people, scientists and research and innovation support staff, including 44 different nationalities. **Contexte et atouts du poste**: The project is a collaboration between Theophanis Tsandilas, a researcher at Inria Saclay, and Julien Bobroff, a physics professor at the Université Paris-Saclay and a renowned science popularizer. The scientific contributions of the PhD thesis will be centered on HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) research, aligning with expertise of Theophanis Tsandilas. The PhD student will be hosted by ex)situ an Inria team at the _Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique_ at the Université Paris-Saclay, with extensive experience in multidisciplinary collaborations. Julien Bobroff and his team, _La Physique Autrement_, will guide the entire design process through their expertise in science communication. This team is unique in that it combines innovation, public testing and research in communication sciences and pedagogy. Over the past decade, the team has designed over 300 original popularization projects in a wide range of formats. Julien himself has an audience of nearly a million subscribers on various social networks: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. The PhD thesis is fully funded by the Université Paris-Saclay (SPRINGCS 2025 program). The funding also covers expenses for equipment and conference participation during the course of the thesis. **Mission confiée**: **Scientific objectives and challenges** Popular science lectures are still, even today, formatted in very traditional ways, where a speaker on stage presents a pre-designed slideshow. However, there is a real need for innovative tools that allow speakers to present their topics in a more interactive and spontaneous ways, captivating their audience and providing intuition about concepts and real-world phenomena that are hard to communicate verbally or through static graphics. Our goal is to develop flexible presentation tools that augment the speaker's experience, making science communication interactive, story-based, and engaging while creating a more horizontal connection between the public and experts. As Julien Bobroff explains [3], although quantum physics concepts are often considered difficult to visualize, _“even veteran quantum physicists [ ] need a mental image of the objects being manipulated_.” As a result, they constantly seek to create visual representations when teaching or popularizing quantum phenomena. **_Figure _**_1_**_._**_ Inspirational examples. (a) Julien Bobroff’s _live demonstration of quantum levitation_ [1_]. (b) Julien’s public lecture on _“physics of the extremes"_ [2_] using physical proxies for visual support. (c) Ken Perlin’s _video demonstration of Chalktalk_ [10_], a lecture tool supporting dynamic sketch representations of Computer Science concepts. Those representations can be linked together, communicating with each other and exchanging their data._ Julien Bobroff has long been exploring original visual representations and innovative lecture formats that combine physical artifact manipulation with visual projections (see Figure 1). We aim to extend such presentations with interactive visuals that not only enhance the communication of complex concepts (e.g., illustrating a quantum physics experiment) but also augment the speaker’s physical interactions. Achieving this requires the development of novel presentation authoring tools that allow speakers to: (i) easily create custom visual representations without needing to code, (ii) integrate interactive behavior and semantic meaning into their visuals, and (iii) synchronize these visuals with their live interaction space and diverse input methods. Popular science videos employ a variety of narrative techniques to engage their audiences [14], but they largely rely on video post-production editing. In contrast, our goal is to develop tools that empower scientists to author and stage interactive materials for live lectures. Our ambition to leverage these tools to explore new science presentation formats and create original demonstrations, which we will showcase in public lectures. **State of the art** Very active research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been exploring tools that support users’ complex cognitive processes through dynamic representations that can be interactively manipulated in real time. However, a major challen