About me

I grew up in the rural countryside of France. In 2001, I moved to Guadeloupe in the Caribbean where I graduated from high-school and started my undergraduate studies in general biology. In 2005 I moved to Réunion island in the Indian Ocean where I earned my Bachelor's degree in organismal biology. I went on to a Master program in La Rochelle, France to study environmental science and coastal ecosystems and finally moved back to the Caribbean where I earned a Master's degree in Tropical Biodiversity.

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In 2007 I started my Ph.D. program at the University of Antilles in Guadeloupe in the frame of a collaboration with the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico where I was a visiting graduate student for a few months. I defended my Ph.D. thesis in 2010.

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After a short research visit in Merida, Mexico and a few more analyses in Guadeloupe, I moved to Vienna, Austria for a three-year postdoc in Monika Bright’s Lab (Department of Limnology and Biological Oceanography). I investigated the trophic symbiosis between the ectosymbiont Ca. Thiobius zoothamnicola and its ciliate host Zoothamnium niveum. I re-designed flow-through cultivation chambers and cultivated the symbiotic and aposymbiotic ciliates.

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I then joined Silvia Bulgheresi’s Lab (Department of Ecogenetics and Systems Biology, University of Vienna, Austria) for a second postdoc which would have me back to the Caribbean to conduct fieldwork and experiments. I investigated the host-symbiont trophic relationship in the symbiotic nematode family: Stilbonematinae.

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In 2018 I was offered a Project Scientist position in Berkeley California with a dual affiliation with the Laboratory for Research in Complex Systems (LRC) and the DOE Joint Genome Institute. I am now a Scientist at the LRC and am still hosted at the JGI within the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and I am currently focusing on two main projects: I am working on establishing a first chemosynthetic symbiosis model system and I study the evolution of biological complexity.