François Ropital is a specialist internationally renowned in the field of corrosion, graduated as a Materials Engineer from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées of Lyon. He has a PhD in Chemical Engineering awarded by École Nationale Supérieure des Mines of Saint-Étienne and holds a national accreditation to supervise research in Applied Chemistry and Industrial Process Engineering from the Paris VI University. He works on the behaviour of materials for energy technologies.

Expert at IFP Energies nouvelles, François Ropital teaches corrosion at IFP School and IFP Training. He also leads work groups on the subject in the European Federation of Corrosion and UFIP (French Oil Industry Association). He was scientific editor for several books in the field of corrosion and author himself of two books and many scientific publications.

Open to numerous scientific fields, he works more specially on corrosion and degradation of metallic materials, on electrochemistry interfacial and reactive processes, and on new inorganic materials for hydrogen storage.