Jean-Luc Adam received a PhD degree in chemistry from the University of Rennes, France, in 1983. After a one-year postdoctoral appointment at Oklahoma State University, he joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France in 1985. Since then,In 1989, he was a research associate at IBM-Almaden Research Center (San Jose, USA), conducting studies on glasses for optical memories. From 2009 to 2012, he was Joint-Head of the International Laboratory on Materials and Optics with the University of Arizona in Tucson, and, from 2012 to 2016, he was Director of the Institute of Chemical Sciences at the University of Rennes. Since 1999, he has been a CNRS senior scientist (Directeur de Recherche) at University of Rennes. He has authored or co-authored 220 papers and book chapters, and has delivered more than 65 invited lectures at international conferences.

Dr. Jean-Luc Adam research has been devoted essentially to the chemistry of non-oxide glasses and to the spectroscopy of optically active ions, including research on optical fibers and waveguides.