Sarah Lamaison and Ralitsa Todorova receive the L'Oréal-Unesco Young Talent Award for Women in Science

Sarah Lamaison is a doctoral student in the Chemistry of Biological Processes laboratory, part of Professor Marc Fontecave's Chemistry of Biological Processes Chair team.

Ralitsa Todorova is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en biologie of the Collège de France (Michaël Zugaro team).

As the L'Oréal Foundation states in its presentation of the class of 2020: "the Jeunes Talents prize rewards women researchers whose work contributes to building a better, more sustainable, more resilient and more inclusive world. This 2020 edition honors 35 young talents selected by a jury of excellence from 700 applications. Originating from all over the world, conducting their research in mainland France or the French overseas territories, these doctoral and post-doctoral students are engaged in fields as varied as medicine, astronomy, physics and computer science. All remarkable for the excellence of their careers, they each represent a hope for our common future. Many of them have been confronted with differences in treatment with their male counterparts throughout their careers. Today, they wish to contribute to promoting science among the youngest and future generations. May they, as role models, help to put an end to self-censorship and lack of confidence among women in scientific careers. May they contribute to strengthening the representation of bold women in science."

Sarah Lamaison

"Research is a wonderful adventure"

Recycling_CO2 to free ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels

Sarah Lamaison has always wished to put her research work at the service of the environment and act for the common good. It was a teacher in her final year of high school who encouraged her in this direction and motivated her choice of a scientific career path.

Originally from the Basque country, the researcher admits to being deeply attached to the ocean and the environment. After studying economics and chemistry at the École Polytechnique, she obtained a master's degree from Cambridge University, then went on to pursue a doctorate between the Collège de France and Stanford in the field of artificial photosynthesis - a process that aims to replicate plant photosynthesis, which captures and converts_CO2 from the atmosphere into sugars enabling their metabolism to function.

At the Collège de France and Stanford, Sarah Lamaison is developing chemical engineering technologies to transform_CO2 into various substances currently produced from petroleum. These technologies open the way to emancipation from fossil resources by creating a sustainable carbon cycle in which_CO2 can be recycled ad infinitum.

The young researcher's research has contributed to the filing of two patents. The Green Fuel Company, her entrepreneurial project based on her research, is the winner of the i-Lab 2020 competition.

Her vision is of a science that "does good". And if she has a dream, it's that of"a clean planet, whose wonders future generations will also be able to observe". Every day, through her work, she strives to contribute to this.

Ralitsa Todorova

"Shared ideas go further

Understanding how memories are made

Ralitsa Todorova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and it was across Europe that she learned about brain function, a subject that fascinated her as early as high school, when she came across an article on the development of a brain-controlled prosthetic arm.

Ralitsa Todorova obtained her bachelor's degree in neurobiology in Edinburgh, went on exchange to Uppsala, Sweden, and then joined the Paris School of Neuroscience in 2013 for a master's degree in cognitive science.

She then joined Michaël Zugaro's team at the Collège de France, where she wrote her thesis on memory consolidation. This process of reinforcing and transforming experiences into memories takes place during sleep. Without interference from the "outside" world, brain regions communicate with each other and reactivate memory traces to revise and re-evaluate memories. This memory consolidation requires a very fine-tuned interaction with the brain's sleep rhythms. Ralitsa Todorova's work sheds ever finer light on this eminently complex mechanism, which is as crucial to human health as it is to cognition and learning.

Todorova, who is also a sportswoman with a passion for floorball and rock-climbing, is convinced that collaboration and collective intelligence are the driving force behind progress. A fervent supporter of collaborative work, she believes that the representation of women in scientific circles is a sine qua non for the wealth of ideas and diversity of perspectives employed.