Philippe Charpentier began his career as an experimental physicist in 1975 at the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (Saclay, France), where he obtained his PhD in physics in 1983. In 1984 he joined the DELPHI experiment at LEP, where he designed, implemented and was responsible for the data acquisition system until the closure of LEP in 2000. In 1988, he obtained a limited duration contract at CERN, which was converted to an indefinite contract in 1995. Philippe joined the LHCb experiment in 2002, where he was responsible for various computing-related activities, mostly related to usage of the Grid distributed computing infrastructure, and he was a member of several governing bodies of the WLCG (Worldwide LHC Computing Grid) until his retirement in October 2018.

Philippe was a member of the CERN Health Insurance Board (CHISB) for 14 years and chaired it from 2008 to 2017 as part of his remit as strategic advisor to the Director General on health insurance matters. During this period, he proposed several measures to re-establish the balance of the scheme as part of the 2010 five-yearly review of CERN’s financial and social conditions, and led the process of rewriting the rules of the scheme.