Samuel Nicolay's vocation was to become a scientist. In 1997, attracted by the rigour of mathematics, he started a Bachelor's degree in mathematical sciences at the University of Liège. Upon graduation, he was offered a position as assistant teacher at the University contingent upon his enrolling in the D.E.A. program. This is when he discovered wavelets, which have remained his main focus to this day. In his D.E.A. thesis, he presented the theoretical research on wavelets undertaken at the Department of Mathematical Sciences of the University of Liège and explored possible applications (in electrocardiograms or spectrometry for example).

In 2001, Samuel Nicolas started working on his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Liège in collaboration with Alain Arneodo, a physicist then working in Bordeaux. Dr Arneodo led him into the world of biological applications of wavelets. "It is a gold mine", he confided. While working on his thesis, Dr Nicolay, a trained mathematician, met with physicists and biologists. At first a “culture shock” of sorts, these encounters were soon the source of rich dialogue between the various disciplines participating.

In April 2006, Samuel Nicolay presented his Ph.D. thesis on the analysis of DNA sequences by wavelet transform. He is currently FNRS research associate in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Liège.

Publications

NICOLAY S., MABILLE G., FETTWEIS X., ERPICUM M., A 30 and a 43 months period cycles in air temperature time series using the morlet wavelet method, in Climate Dynamics, doi: 10.1007/s00382-008-0484-5, 2008

HUVET M., NICOLAY S., TOUCHON M., AUDIT B., D'AUBENTON-CARAFA Y., ARNEODO A. and THERMES C., Human gene organization driven by the coordination of replication and transcription, Genome Research, vol. 17, 1278--1285,2007.

NICOLAY S., BRODIE of BRODIE E.B., TOUCHON M., AUDIT B., D'AUBENTON-CARAFA Y., THERMES C. and ARNEODO A., Bifractality of human DNA strand-assymetry profile result from transcription, PRE, vol. 75, 032902, 2007.

ARNEODO A., D'AUBENTON-CARAFA Y., AUDIT B., BRODIE of BRODIE E.B., NICOLAY S., St JEAN P., THERMES C., TOUCHON M. et VAILLANT C., Large-scale Analysis of the human genome: from DNA sequence analysis to the modeling of replication in higher eukaryotes, Proceeding of the 14th EUSIPCO, Florence, Italy, 2006.

ARNEODO A., D'AUBENTON-CARAFA Y., AUDIT B., BRODIE of BRODIE E.B., NICOLAY S., St JEAN P., THERMES C., TOUCHON M. and VAILLANT C., DNA in chromatin: from genome-wide sequence analysis to the modelling of replication in mammals, Advances in Chemical Physics, 135, 203--252, 2006.

NICOLAY S., Analyse de séquences and par la transformée en ondelettes : extraction d'informations structurelles, dynamiques et fonctionnelles, Thèse, Ulg, 2006