Claire Prada

Claire Prada (born 1962) is a French applied mathematician and an expert on time-reversed acoustics. This is a technique in which an acoustic signal is recorded by a sensor array, and then re-broadcast from the sensors with its timing reversed from when it was received, in order to re-focus the signal at its original location. Beyond time reversal, her research interests include ultrasound imaging, guided elastic waves, laser ultrasonics, and applications including medical imaging and non-destructive testing. She is a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated with the Institut Langevin, a joint research unit between ESPCI Paris and CNRS.

Education and career Prada was born in 1962 in Paris. After study in mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure and Pierre and Marie Curie University, she received a master's degree in 1987; she completed her Ph.D. through Paris Diderot University in 1991. Her doctoral dissertation, Retournement temporel des ondes ultrasonores : application à la focalisation, was directed by Mathias Fink.

She has been affiliated with CNRS since 1990.

Recognition Prada was elected as a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 2006, "for contributions to time-reversal acoustic remote sensing".

She was one of two 2023 recipients of the Médaille Française of the French Acoustical Society.