Sylvain Ballandras was born in Strasbourg in 1965. He joined the CNRS in 1991, after his PhD in Engineering Sciences from the Université de Franche-Comté. From 1991 to 1995, he has been working on surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices, but he was mainly involved in the development of micromachining technologies. He initiated the development of a finite element analysis package devoted to acoustic transducers and also new researches on miniaturized transducers for endoscopic applications. He joined TMX in 1997 for a one year industrial training project. From 1999 to 2005, he was responsible for the research group entitled « Acoustique et Microsonique » at LPMO. He created its own consulting office to answer specific demands from industry.

In October 2003, he was promoted Research Director at the CNRS, in the newly created FEMTO-ST Institute in Besançon. In 2008, Sylvain Ballandras' group joined the Time-Frequency Department of FEMTO for the purpose of scientific coherence and moved to Besançon's national engineering school ENSMM. Its present scientific developments concern the fundamentals in acoustics and guided propagation, as well as technologies dedicated to acousto-electronic devices and systems, focused on sources, filters and sensors.

Sylvain Ballandras also benefitted from the 25.2 agreement of the French research rules to join as a member of senior staff of SENSeOR (a spin-off from TEMEX dedicated to SAW and BAW sensors) at the end of 2008.