Rate My Professor Olivier Adam

Professor Olivier Adam is a Professor at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and serves as Affiliated Researcher and Deputy Director of the Ocean Institute (Abu Dhabi). He is a researcher specializing in bioacoustics, signal processing, and machine learning. His work focuses on the sounds produced by cetaceans to decode their communication systems and to better understand their populations and social structures. Research projects examine mother–calf relationships in humpback whales and social interactions among sperm whales, as well as the decomposition and analysis of underwater soundscapes to assess the impact of human activities at sea on marine ecosystems, with particular attention to cetaceans.

He is the author of more than 80 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Professor Adam co-organizes several international conferences, including the DCLDE Conference and the World Humpback Whale Congress, and has supervised more than 20 PhD students. In 2024, he served as the Île-de-France Ambassador for France’s national Science Festival (Fête de la Science). Since 2019, he has been a member of the French National Marine Noise Working Group, established by the Ministry of the Environment. Committed to public engagement and science communication, he appears regularly in general media, on television, radio—including Radio France—and in podcasts and social media content. He has curated scientific exhibitions, including Baleinopolis at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris and The Ocean Is Alive!, and served on the scientific committee for the exhibition Musicanimale at the Philharmonie de Paris. In October 2025, he published Inside a Whale’s Mind (Dans la tête d’une baleine) with HumenSciences.