Thierry Azaïs was graduated in Chemistry from University Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris in 1998, before starting his PhD in the Laboratory « Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Paris » (LCMCP), under the supervision of Prof. Christian Bonhomme. He completed a thesis entitled “Synthesis and multinuclear solid-state NMR study of “Al−O−P” clusters, models of secondary building units of microporous materials”, graduating in 2001.
After postdoctoral research at the University of Jena in the group of Prof. Anne S. Ulrich, and after a brief career as radio host on OKJ radio, he became an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry, UPMC, and joined the group “Sol−Gel Materials and NMR” headed by Florence Babonneau in 2002.
Now, he is leading the team SMiLES « Spectroscopy, Modelling at interfaces for Environment and Health » at LCMCP and he is teaching diverse academic subject areas including Inorganic Chemistry, Spectroscopy, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Biomineralization.
His research focuses on the application of multinuclear solid-state NMR techniques to the study of interfaces in hybrid materials. Current interests include hybrid mesoporous silica, host−guest materials for drug delivery applications, collagen/apatite composites for tissue
engineering and natural biomaterials such as bone and nacre. He has authored over 60 publications.
The logo of the SMiLES team is inspired by the 1966 unfinished album SMiLE from the Beach Boys (note the small « i »).
The SMiLE project composed by Beach Boy’s leader Brian Wilson, came to be regarded as the most « legendary » unreleased album in the history of popular music.
The abandoned recording sessions from the unfinished 1966 album were finally out in 2011 giving an overview of what the completed album might have sounded like.