CV

Education

Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence and Biodiversity, University of Montpellier, 2022-2025 (expected)
Master’s degree in Data Science, Polytechnic Institute of Paris, 2021-2022
Engineer’s degree in AI, LDV Graduate School of Engineering, 2017-2022
Manager’s degree in Digital Marketing, LDV Management School, 2017-2022

Work experience

April 2022 - October 2022: Data Scientist
- Inria
- Duties included: working on species distribution modeling, writing a Working Note and a bibliography, participating in a competition, defining new state-of-the-art methods
- Supervisor: Alexis Joly
April 2021 - September 2021: Data Analyst
- Vivendi
- Duties included: extracting raw data using web scrapping, correcting corrupted data with machine learning algorithms, performing analysis, preparing reports by creating dashboards
- Supervisor: Anne Dery
September 2020 - April 2021: Data Science Researcher
- DeVinci Research Center
- Duties included: writing a scientific paper on my use of machine and deep learning techniques (e.g., NLP, OCR, object detection) and algorithms (e.g., k-NN, SVM, gradient boosting)
- Supervisor: Christophe Rodrigues

Skills

Programming languages
- Python
- R
- Java
Artificial intelligence
- Machine Learning
- Deep Learning
- Computer vision
- Natural Language Processing
- Transformer
Biodiversity and conservation
- Community Ecology
- Macroecology and Biogeography
- Species Interactions
- Habitat Mapping
- Citizen Science and Remote Sensing
Data
- Manipulation
- Analysis
- Visualization
Mathematics
- Algebra
- Calculus
- Probability and Statistics
- Discrete Mathematics
- Optimization

Main publications (click here for the complete list)

Fully automatic extraction of morphological traits from the Web: utopia or reality?

Marcos, D., van de Vlasakker, R., Athanasiadis, I. N., Bonnet, P., Goeau, H., Joly, A., ... & Panousis, K. P. (2024). Fully automatic extraction of morphological traits from the Web: utopia or reality?. arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.17179.

GeoPlant: Spatial Plant Species Prediction Dataset

Picek, L., Botella, C., Servajean, M., Leblanc, C., Palard, R., Larcher, T., ... & Joly, A. (2024, December). GeoPlant: Spatial Plant Species Prediction Dataset. In NEURIPS 2024.

A deep-learning framework for enhancing habitat identification based on species composition

Leblanc, C., Bonnet, P., Servajean, M., Chytrý, M., Aćić, S., Argagnon, O., ... & Joly, A. (2024). A deep‐learning framework for enhancing habitat identification based on species composition. Applied Vegetation Science, 27(3), e12802.

Species Distribution Modeling based on aerial images and environmental features with Convolutional Neural Networks

Leblanc, C., Joly, A., Lorieul, T., Servajean, M., & Bonnet, P. (2022, September). Species Distribution Modeling based on aerial images and environmental features with Convolutional Neural Networks. In CLEF (Working Notes) (pp. 2123-2150).

GeoPl@ntBERT: modelling plant species assemblages and producing high-resolution maps of habitat types with large language models

July 23, 2024

Congress at IBC 2024, Madrid, Spain

Pl@ntBERT: leveraging large language models to enhance vegetation classification through species composition analysis

June 20, 2024

Congress at ECCB 2024, Bologna, Italy

LifeCLEF 2024 teaser: Species Identification and Prediction Challenges

March 27, 2024

Conference at ECIR 2024, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Main teachings (click here for the other teachings)

Science des données 3 (2024-2025)

Science des données 3 (2023-2024)

Awards

Most deserving student - Mayor of Paris
Highest Honors - Engineering School
Best monitoring and modelling team - B-Cubed Hackathon
Best project (for “Talking glove”) - Veolia
Multiple data science competition 1st places - Kaggle
Winner of an AI Connect 4 tournament - Engineering School

Professional development

DeepLearn 2024 (Summer school)
Statlearn 2023 (Conference)
Machine Learning for Life Sciences (Conference)
Deep Learning (Course)
Deep Learning Specialization (MOOC)
Data Science Specialization (MOOC)
Research Ethics (MOOC)
Research integrity in scientific professions (MOOC)
Unlock Your English - Level 1 (MOOC)
Unlock Your English - Level 2 (MOOC)

Volunteer experience

Private teacher (Several companies and individuals, Paris and Montpellier, part-time for 8 years since 2017)
Food distribution employee (Linkee, Montpellier, part-time for 1 year since 2024)
Employee in a community grocery store (The Salvation Army, Paris, full-time for 1 month in 2018)

Languages

French: Native
English: Fluent
German: Advanced
Italian: Intermediate
Spanish: Basic

Interests

Boxing (first fun fact: I never lost a game against Muhammad Ali)
Chess (second fun fact: I’m also undefeated against Garry Kasparov)
Cinema (the more famous the movie is, the more I will pretend that I don’t like it)
Piano (I need to learn the 18th variation of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43, to impress my girlfriend)
Plants (I like them but I’m not sure they like me… Working on it!)

César Leblanc

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