I was born in North-East Algeria (El-Maïn). I started my primary school very late at 12 after the French-Algerian war. I got my baccalaureate at 22 and an engineer diploma at 27 (CERI – Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche en Informatique, Algiers, 1978, successively renamed INI, then ESI). I leaved Algeria for France, the first time in 1977 for a two years training in Aix-en-Provence (Minister of Industry) and the second time in 1981, for a PhD thesis  at the University P. & M. Curie (Paris VI, currently know as Sorbonne Université), while my research has been done at INRIA (Sabre Database Project). In 1992, I was graduated with the HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) from University of Paris VI.

I have been a senior lecturer at the CERI engineering school (Algiers, Algeria) from late 1978 to 1981, and at the University of Paris VI from 1983 to 1986. From 1987 to 1992, I have been associate professor at Paris VI University. Since 1992, I am a full professor at the University of Versailles SQY (first class in 1999 and exceptional class in 2008). 

In the meanwhile I was appointed by Inria, during 15 years, as a Scientific Collaborator of different research Teams (Sabre, Rodin, Caravel) where I participated to various research projects on object databases, active databases and data warehousing. For my sabbatical year (1998), I was granted by ERCIM to visit the University of Rome-La Sapienza (half year) and the Technical University of Athens – NTUA (half year). In 2006-2007, I got a one year CNRS delegation I spent for performing an ANR research project.

I was also a co-founder of a company (1985) specialized on data engineering (Infosys). One of its main goals was to industrialize a research prototype on database design, resulted from my PhD thesis. The final product (named SECSI) has met a certain success in France and distributed to about  300 enterprises (mainly banks, insurances, energy,…) and education (engineering schools and university masters). The company  reached more than 40 employees with a good growth between 1985 and 1993. Then it was sold to the former US EDS Corp. (later owned by HP).

Within the University of Versailles, I actively participated to the creation of the PRiSM lab, a CNRS associated laboratory, where I led different research teams on database technology, data engineering, data warehousing and information systems. I supervised more than 30 PhD  students. Many of them have academic positions in France or abroad, others have successful careers in industry and services.

I was involved in many research projects among which: Complex Agregate Information Retrieval (ANR/CAIR), Complex Objects Matching (ANR/AOC), Data Quality (ANR/QUADRIS), Personalized Access to Big Data (ANR/APMD), active databases (European Network / ACT-NET), Datawarehousing (Esprit LTR/DWQ). 

I published several papers in different journals and conferences and co-authored six books on database systems, object technology and design methodologies. I was also editor of several LNCS Proceedings of various international conferences. I was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering of Information Systems and a co-founder/co-editor in chief of the Networking and Information Systems Journal (both published by Hermes, Paris). I was Guest-editor of the Data and Knowledge Engineering Journal (Elsevier) and a Guest-editor of the International Journal on Information Systems (Elsevier). In 2017, I co-edited a book (CNRS Editions) which includes about 150 short articles on all aspects of big data (technology, analytics, applications and social impacts). In 2021, I co-edited another book on Human-Machine Interaction in the Cyber-World (CNRS Edition, March 2021). In 2023, I also co-edited a collective book on interdisciplinary research as performed in several CNRS/MITI research projects. I still continue promoting research through various books popularizing main methodologies and results.

I participated as a program committee member of many national and international conferences (including the most important ones in data management and information systems such as VLDB, EDBT, ER/Conceptual Modeling, CoopIS, CAiSE, DOLAP, DaWak, ….). I was the founder of the International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Databases (NLDB) in 1995 that I chaired twice 1995, 2000). I was the Chairman of the Organization Committee of the EDBT’96 Conference, the co-Chair of the Program Committee of the ER’99 Conference on Conceptual Modeling, and the general Chair of ICSNW‘2004. I was the Tutorials & Panels Chairs of EDBT’08 and the European Coordinator of ER’2001. I was a member of the EDBT Conference Association from 1996 to 2008 and I was a member of the ER Conference Steering Committee from 1999 to 2003.

I was also involved as a member of several local and national academic committees (including CNU, the National Council of French Universities; CNRS/RTP9; GE4 Expert Group at the French Ministry of Education and Research; ANR/CPS-Défi7), as expert of European research programs and as expert in different CNRS and AERES evaluation committees, as well as ANR projects. I have been a reviewer, a chair or committee member of more than 40 PhD and HDR defense jurys.

From December 2009 to September 2021, I was deputy director of the CNRS-INS2I Institute  (newly created in November 2009) where I was in charge of promoting the research on big data and data science. Member of the Interdisciplinary Mission of the CNRS, I launched an interdisciplinary challenge on Big Data (Mastodons) that I coordinate from 2012 to 2018. This challenge involved more than 300 researchers, and was the basement to a national research network (GdR MaDICS) on big data and data science. I launched another interdisciplinary challenge on Astro-Informatics that I coordinate from 2017 to 2019, and another challenge on Digital Health (2018-2020). I was also a CNRS representative in several PIA Labex and Equipex projects (CominLabs, Numev, DigiCosme, DigiScope, FIT) as well as the ICT department in the University of Paris-Saclay.