Matthieu studied Physics in ENS de Lyon, France. He then did his PhD in CEA Saclay, during which he worked on the generation of ultrashort pulses in the femtosecond regime, using hollow-core fibers and multipass cells, and in the attosecond regime through high-harmonics generation. He then used these ultrashort pulses to perform time-resolved spectroscopy on solid samples.

His areas of interest also include beams carrying an orbital angular momentum and their interaction with matter, a topic he aims to further study as part of the FASTER project with Christian Brahms.