Justin Carpentier
I am a research director at Inria, specializing in robotics, and head of the Willow research group. Willow is a joint team of Inria, ENS, and CNRS, based in the Department of Computer Science at ENS in Paris. My research spans perception, learning, optimization, simulation, and control for robotics.
In September 2024, I was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for ARTIFACT, The ARTIficial Motion FACTory. The project began in September 2025. If you would like to join this research adventure, please get in touch.
Biography
I joined the Willow research group as a postdoctoral researcher in September 2018. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Gepetto research group at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse, where I also pursued my PhD from 2014 to 2017.
My doctoral research explored the computational foundations of anthropomorphic locomotion, from the mechanisms underlying human bipedalism to new mathematical formulations for humanoid robot locomotion.
I received my degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics with highest honors from École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay in 2013. In 2014, I was a visiting student working with Katja Mombaur in the Optimization in Robotics and Biomechanics group at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Open positions
At Willow, we welcome talented postdoctoral researchers and engineers interested in tackling challenging problems in robotics. To express your interest, please complete our application form, and I will get back to you to discuss opportunities.
Research overview
In February 2023, I gave a talk to the IEEE RAS TC on Model-based Optimization for Robotics entitled Progress and Prospects in Optimisation for Learning and Control in Robotics. The talk offers an overview of our contributions to the field at that time.
Collaborators and team
I collaborate with Francis Bach, Adrien Taylor, Jean Ponce, Cordelia Schmid, Josef Sivic, and Ivan Laptev, alongside a team of talented and passionate researchers and engineers:
PhD students
- Roland Andrews, with Adrien Taylor.
- Franki Nguimatsia Tiofack.
- Théotime Le Hellard.
- Mathis Scheffler, with Cordelia Schmid.
- Loic Cabannes, with Hervé Jégou.
Postdoctoral researchers
- Fabian Schramm, reinforcement learning in robotics.
- Yann de Mont-Marin, differentiable simulation and geometric learning. Previously a PhD student (2020-2024) in Willow under the supervision of Jean Ponce and Jean-Paul Laumond.
- Etienne Ménager, differentiable simulation and optimal control for soft robots.
- Ajay Sathya, low-complexity algorithms for frugal and contact-rich simulation.
- Louis Montaut, differentiable simulation for contact-rich robotics; Coal expert.
Engineers
- Bruce Wingo.
- Joris Vaillant, expert in the Willow open-source software stack.
- Pierre-Guillaume Raverdy, manager of the Inria robotics facilities.
- Sarah El-Kazdadi, former PhD student, now a software engineer after returning from NVIDIA.
- Lucas Haubert, research engineer on optimization solvers for robotics and beyond.
Alumni
I have also had the pleasure of working with many passionate and inspiring postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, engineers, and visitors:
- Etienne Arlaud, former manager of the Inria robotics facilities. Now a software engineer at EGIDE.
- Frederike Dümbgen, global optimal control and estimation for robotics. Now an assistant professor at CMU.
- Ewen Dantec, whole-body and real-time model predictive control for rich contact interactions. Now a software engineer at Alten.
- Mégane Millan, Pinocchio software engineer. Now a research engineer at ISIR-UPMC.
- Olivier Roussel, Tirrex software engineer with Christian Duriez and Fabien Spindler.
- Etienne Moullet, postdoctoral researcher (2022-2025) with François Bailly and Christine Azevedo. Now a postdoctoral researcher at ISIR-UPMC.
- Wilson Jallet, non-smooth optimization for rich contact interactions; Aligator expert. Previously a PhD student (2021-2024), co-supervised with Nicolas Mansard. Now a research scientist at Capital Fund Management.
- Quentin Le-Lidec, postdoctoral researcher (2024-2025) on differentiable simulation for contact-rich robotics, and PhD student (2021-2024) co-supervised with Cordelia Schmid and Ivan Laptev. Now a postdoctoral researcher at AMI Labs with Yann LeCun. PhD thesis: Differentiable optimization for robotics: simulation, learning and control.
- Ludovic De Matteis, with Nicolas Mansard.
- Lander Vanroye, PhD visitor advised by Joris De Schutter and Wilm Decré.
- Oumayma Bounou, PhD student (2020-2024), co-supervised with Jean Ponce. Now a postdoctoral researcher at NYU with Yann LeCun. PhD thesis: Learning System Dynamics from Sensory Input under Optimal Control Principles.
- Antoine Bambade, PhD student (2020-2023), co-supervised with Adrien Taylor. Now a research scientist at EDF. PhD thesis: Primal-dual proximal augmented lagrangian methods for quadratic programming: theory and implementation.
- Sarah El-Kazdadi, former PhD student and software engineer. Now a linear algebra specialist at NVIDIA.
- Rohan Budhiraja, software engineer. Now at SquareMind.
- Armand Jordana, PhD student (2020-2024) co-supervised with Ludovic Righetti, and a master’s student in Willow in summer 2019. Now a postdoctoral researcher at LAAS-CNRS. PhD thesis: Reasoning About Perception Uncertainty in Nonlinear Model Predictive Control.
- Kateryna Zorina, advised by Josef Sivic and Vladimír Petrík.
My earlier robotics collaborations include work with Jean-Paul Laumond, Nicolas Mansard, Olivier Stasse, Mehdi Bennalegue, Andrea Del Prete and Steve Tonneau.
Software
I am the lead developer of several open-source robotics software projects. I believe open-source software helps advance both research and society by making cutting-edge methods broadly accessible.