My research activities have been devoted to image and characterize new worlds, and in particular to the study of exoplanets, their physical and atmospheric characterization and more globally, the study of the formation, the evolution and the architecture of planetary systems. I developed an expertise in the field of high-contrast imaging and spectroscopy. Taking advantage of my instrumental background and implication in the development of exoplanet spectro-imagers on Large Telescopes, through a large network of international collaborations and the supervision of young students and researchers, I obtained and participated in breakthrough results in the past 20 years. They include the first image of an exoplanet, the first spectral characterization of young exoplanetary atmospheres, the first direct evidence of a young exoplanet in revolution around its primary host, the discovery of one of the most extreme planetary systems in a binary, the determination of the frequency of giant planets at long periods necessary to test theories of planetary formation, the first exoplanet discovered by the extreme-Adaptive Optics planet imager SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch) at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and more recently the discovery of young exoplanet in formation in young transition disk. I am now taking an active part in the preparation and definition of the next generation of instruments for the ground-based European community at VLT and the Extremely Large Telescope for the Horizon 2025 - 2035.