Could you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your career ?
I'm a geneticist specializing in epigenetics.
I began my university studies at Cambridge University in the UK with a degree in physics, and then decided to focus on biology. Driven by research, I went on to do my PhD at the Imperial Cancer ResearchFund in London. After four years of thesis work, I joined the Institut Pasteur in 1990 on a postdoctoral contract to study the inactivation of the Xchromosome, an epigenetic process specific to women.
My professional experience at the Institut Pasteur lasted nine years, during which I had the opportunity to become a CNRS research fellow. With this experience behind me, I decided to spend a year working in the United States at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research institute. It was then that I was able to set up a research team and join the Institut Curie in Paris in 2001, and in 2010, I became Director of the Genetics and Developmental Biology Unit. In 2012, I was appointed Professor at the Collège de France, then Director General of EMBL in January 2019.
How do you see your professorship at Collège de France ?
Being a professor at the Collège de France enables me to communicate advanced studies on epigenetics, a fast-growing discipline, to the public. My lectures and seminars can stimulate reflection on subjects much broader than my own research.
Being appointed Professor at the Collège de France has enabled me to broaden and open up my horizons even further, with the opportunity to interact with professors from a wide range of fields and to tackle major, multi-disciplinary and topical subjects.
Tell us about a highlight of your professional career
Following on from the answer to the previous question, I'd like to mention the symposium " Migrations, réfugiés, exil ", organized by the Collège de France in 2016, which subsequently gave rise to the PAUSE program. At the instigation of Alain Prochiantz, who was administrator of the Collège de France at the time, we brought together leading figures from science and civil society to form the PAUSE program's support committee. Together, we signed an opinion piece published onOctober15 2016 to alert public opinion to the urgent need to welcome scientists in danger in France.
Another highlight of my scientific career was the discovery (in collaboration with Job Dekker) of a new rule for the spatial organization of chromosomes that reflects how they function - associated topological domains (TADs). This was an unexpected discovery whose studies have opened up many new avenues for understanding gene regulation and certain pathologies.
Have you encountered any obstacles in your career and how did you overcome them ?
I've been very lucky in my professional career, having had support on both a personal and professional level. So I haven't encountered any major obstacles.
Nevertheless, I've noticed around me, and in my own experience, that it's clearly less easy for a woman to access and hold positions of responsibility at a high level : the higher up the career ladder you go, the greater the challenge becomes when you're a woman in environments that are still fairly masculine, such as scientific research.
What advice would you give to young women inspired by the scientific professions ?
The first piece of advice I'd like to give young women is to go for it without asking too many questions. If they're driven by curiosity, science offers some very inspiring careers that give you the opportunity to seek out the unknown, and in that sense it's unique. Of course, they may encounter obstacles that they will be able to overcome if they are driven by passion.
