Gilles Pijaudier-Cabot graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (France) in 1985 and obtained a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1987. After 4 years at CNRS, he has been appointed professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan in 1992 where he was the head of the civil and environmental engineering group at LMT-Cachan. He joined Ecole Centrale de Nantes in 1999 where he started a research and technology group specialised in the durability of concrete structures, including nuclear and waste containment vessels. During ten years, his research interests were focused on ageing of geomaterials (concerete and rocks). At that time he also served as director, in charge of research, at Centrale Nantes. In 2007, he moved to Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, at the same time his research interests started to focus on petroleum and unconventional hydrocarbon resources. He is now director of the Laboratoire des Fluides Complexes et leurs Reservoirs, a joint research group between his university, CNRS and Total. He is also director of the Institut Carnot on sustainable engineering of fossil resources gathering over 450 research scientists in the southwest of France.
His research interests mostly deal with computational tools for evaluating the integrity of concrete structures, damage and fracture, chemo-hydro-mechanical modelling and durability mechanics. Gilles Pijaudier-Cabot authored over 80 papers in international journals and edited 14 books. he is currently serving as editor of Int. Journal of analytical and numerical methods in geomechanics and Int. Journal on the mechanics of time-dependent materials. He received the Bronze medal from CNRS in 1991 and the Jean Mandel award in 1992. He was awarded an advanced grant from the European Research Council in 2008. He has been elected junior member of Institut Universitaire de France in 1996 and became senior member in 2012.