Patrick's researches are devoted to:

- The understanding of collisional processes between small bodies of our Solar System.
- The physical properties and dynamical evolution of asteroids. In particular, I contribute to the study of the specific population of the Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs), their origin, their evolution, their impact probability with the Earth, the method to study them from the ground (modeling, observations) and from space, and mitigation strategies against an impact with the Earth. Regarding the latter, I’m leading the the european science team of the deflection mission concept AIDA under Phase A/B1 study at ESA and NASA. I’m also co-I of the space missions OSIRIS-REx (NASA) and Hayabusa 2 (JAXA).
- The formation of planets and in particular the role of collisions in our Solar System history.