Philippe Després is a full professor in the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Optics at Université Laval. He is also a member of the Université Laval Cancer Research Center, a medical physicist at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval and a researcher at the Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec-Université Laval (IUCPQ-UL). After a master’s degree at Université Laval (2000, Physics) and a doctorate at Université de Montréal (2005, Physics), he completed a postdoctoral fellowship (2005-2007) at the University of California, San Francisco in biomedical engineering and molecular imaging. His research projects focus on medical imaging, in particular tomographic reconstruction and the use of artificial intelligence for detection and classification. He has pioneered advanced computing on graphics processing units (GPUs), leading to the development of innovative applications in medical physics, including an ultra-fast GPU-based Monte Carlo radiative transport code. He is also interested in the valorization of data in the medical environment, in particular the infrastructures, standards and best practices (including FAIR principles) required for the responsible exploitation of clinical information. In this capacity, he is co-director of CIRRUS, the Centre d’intégration et de régie des renseignements de santé pour utilisation secondaire at IUCPQ-UL. He is also Director of the Centre de recherche en données massives (CRDM) at Université Laval, and a researcher at the Observatoire international sur les impacts sociétaux de l’AI et du numérique. He sits on the Research Council of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.