Michel Brune graduated at Ecole Normale Supérieure. He performed his PhD work on the realization of a two-photon micromaser under the supervision of Serge Haroche. He then bercame permanent CNRS researcher at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel in the cavity QED team lead by Serge Haroche and Jean-Michel Raimond. He performed cavity QED experiments involving high Q superconducting microwave resonators and circular Rydberg atoms used as extremely sensitive probes of the cavity radiation field. He performed experiments achieving quantum nondemolition photon counting and revealing essential features of quantum measurement like collapse of the state, repeatability of the measurement and observation of quantum jumps of light. He also prepared "Schrödinger cat" sates of the cavity field and studied their decoherence, performing experiments at the fuzzy boundary between the quantum and the classical worlds. He also performed experiments in the field of quantum information manipulation. He is now starting a project of quantum simulation based on cold, trapped, circular Rydberg atoms.