Christophe Merlo, Ph.D., is Professor at ESTIA Institute of Technology in Industrial Systems Engineering since 2018. He is ESTIA representative administrator on the AFIS (French INCOSE Chapter) Board of Directors. He is member of the Scientific Council of the GSO-InteropVLab cluster. He is member of the Steering Committee of TIC Santé (Healthcare Information and Communication Technologies).
He has been working at ESTIA since 1990, first as a consultant (and lecturer) for 9 years in the field of CAD/CAM and PLM, and then as a lecturer and research scientist, after completing his doctoral dissertation in 2003, within the IMS-UMR 5218, at the University of Bordeaux. His research activity was focused on design management, and the study of information systems supporting management and business activities. After he obtained his habilitation (HDR) in 2009, he supervised a multidisciplinary team composed of researchers in design engineering and in management sciences for 4 years. He is currently co-leading a multidisciplinary research team of 12 people, focused on the study of technological and human systems, aiming at designing and prototyping complex products, by integrating the human element in the various approaches being developed and used, while offering support to companies for the development and maintainance of innovative products. On the pedagogical side, he led the engineering department of ESTIA from 2013 to 2017.
Merlo's current research activities focus on the investigation of complex systems, with the consideration of their design and/or management once they are operational. My collaborative research efforts result in the development of human-centered design models and methods, integrating several types of business expertise, using knowledge modeling or interoperability studies as needed. The human element is at the center of the many projects he has been carrying out, aiming at the transformation of organizations, jointly with a specialist in change management, for example to support SMEs in the integration of additive manufacturing technologies.