Thierry Meynard received his Electrical Engineering degree from ENSEEIHT in Toulouse, France, in 1985, and his Ph.D. from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse in 1988. He joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1991, was appointed Head of the Static Converter Group in 1994, and was promoted to Research Director in 2001. He is currently a CNRS Research Director, First Class, and an IEEE Fellow.

His work has led to several major developments in power converter topologies. He invented the Flying Capacitor Multicell Converter topology, which uses lower-voltage-rated components to improve converter efficiency and power density. This topology has been licensed to several companies, and industrial systems based on it currently handle more than 2 GW of power.

He also invented switch-mode AC/AC converters for the direct adjustment of AC voltage sources. This technology was transferred to Schneider Electric for the development of direct AC/AC choppers and public lighting regulators. He subsequently invented the Stacked Multicell Converter topology, which significantly reduces the capacitor requirements of multicell converters. Industrial applications of this work include the MV6 and MV7 medium-voltage drives, commercialized by General Electric with a 10 kV DC bus, and the Silcovert FH medium-voltage drive developed by Nidec ASI.

In collaboration with ABB, Thierry Meynard co-invented the five-level Active Neutral Point Clamped inverter topology. This development was applied to the ACS2000 medium-voltage drive, covering voltage ratings from 4.16 to 6.9 kV and power ratings from 250 to 3,680 kW in a fuseless and transformerless configuration.

In 2016, he co-founded Power Design Technologies, a start-up developing automated design software for power conversion systems. The company was acquired by Gamma Technologies in July 2021, and its technology is now available as GT-PowerForge.

More recently, Thierry Meynard has worked on TransformerLess Partial Power Converters. Between 2024 and 2026, he filed five patents describing TLPPC topologies for various applications. In 2026, he co-founded YEMOY, a start-up developing TLPPC solutions for data centers, battery energy storage systems, and superchargers.

Alongside his research activities, he worked as a part-time consultant for Cirtem, a French company specializing in static converters, from 2001 to 2016. Since 2016, he has also provided power electronics consulting services to companies including Nidec, SolarEdge, and Schneider Electric.

His international activities include collaborations and extended stays at Université Laval in Canada, Stellenbosch University in South Africa, ABB in Switzerland, the Federal University of Santa Catarina and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, and Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Chile.

His scientific and technological record includes 27 patents and 154 publications indexed in the ISI Web of Science, with an ISI Web of Science h-index of 33.