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Inauguration
Ambassador Laurent Bili
- First Secretary and then Second Counsellor at the Embassy of France in Ankara (1995-99),
- First Secretary, Permanent Representative of France to the Western European Union (WEU) (1998-2000),
- Adviser to the European Union’s interim Political and Security Committee (PSC) in Brussels (2000-02),
- Head of Strategic Affairs (2002).
In 2002, he was Director of the Private Office of the Minister Delegate for European Affairs and became technical adviser at the Diplomatic Unit of the Presidency of the French Republic (2002-07). He successively held the positions of Ambassador to Thailand (2007-09), Director of the Defense Minister’s Civilian and Military Office (2009-10), Ambassador to Turkey (2011-15) and then to Brazil (2015-17).
Laurent Bili was then Director-General for Global Affairs, Culture, Education and International Development at the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and G7/G20 Sous-Sherpa (2017-2019).
Prior to his appointment in Washington, Laurent Bili was Ambassador to China since September 2019.
Dr. Thierry Damerval
Thierry Damerval is the special science and technology envoy for the Ministry of Higher Education and Research and the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs.
He was previously Chairman and CEO of the French National Research Agency (ANR) from 2017 to 2024. Thierry Damerval also was the Vice-CEO of Inserm between 2011 and 2017, having previously held the position of Deputy Director General for Strategy from 2007 to 2011. A doctor in microbiology from Paris Diderot University, he began his career at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and joined the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in 1993, where he held a number of senior positions, including head of biology research programs, director of strategy and evaluation, and director of a CEA biomedical research center. He was also advisor on biological and medical research to the French Minister of Research (1996-1997), advisor on research and innovation to the Prime Minister (2005-2006) and Director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Higher Education and Research (2006-2007).
Dr. Mireille Guyader
Mireille Guyader is the Counselor for Science and Technology for the Embassy of France in the United States since September 1st, 2021, and director of research at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) since 2015. She oversees the Office for Science and Technology apparatus with the goals of monitoring advances in science and technology in the US, promoting bilateral partnerships in science and technology, and fostering exchanges of students, researchers and entrepreneurs.
Prior to this position, she was Director of the Department for Research Mobilization and Innovation for Development at the French National Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD). Activities undertaken included research, consultancy, and capacity building activities in Africa, the Mediterranean basin, Latin America, and French overseas territories. Between 2011 and 2017, she was the Head of the Inserm Office in the United States. Her role was to be a liaison officer between Inserm’s Headquarters and laboratories in France and US biomedical research institutions. From 2006 to 2011, she was Science Attaché for the Life Sciences and Biomedical Research at the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles. The duties for this posting consisted of monitoring advances in science and technology in the US, promoting bilateral partnerships in science and technology, and fostering exchanges of students, researchers, and entrepreneurs.
Previously, she was a researcher at Inserm for 18 years, with research focusing on the understanding of molecular biology of the HIV and related viruses, including species involved in mother-to-child transmission. During her scientific career that she started as a postdoctoral fellow at the Columbia University in New York City, she worked at the Pasteur Institute in France, as a visiting scientist at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, where she worked to get a better understanding of mechanisms of HIV neutralization and at the Centre Medical Universitaire in Geneva (Switzerland) where she studied the mechanism of HIV entry into target cells. She received her Master’s degree in Microbiology from the Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse III) in 1987 and her PhD in Microbiology/Biochemistry from the Université Denis Diderot (Paris VII) in 1990.
Dr. Alain Mermet
Alain Mermet is the new Director of the CNRS Europe and International Division (DEI), effective February 1, 2024.
With a PhD in physics, Alain Mermet began his academic career as an associate professor at the Université d’Orsay (now part of the Université Paris-Saclay), then as a professor at the Université de Lyon. After four years as a researcher at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, he served as Attaché for Science and Technology at the French Embassies in the USA and Norway, before being appointed Director of the CNRS office in Brussels in September 2021.
Session I
Dr. Catherine Dulac
Dr. Miriam Merad
Miriam Merad, M.D.; Ph.D. is the Dean of Translational Research and Therapeutic Innovation, Chair of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute and the Director of the Mount Sinai Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC) at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Dr. Merad is an internationally acclaimed physician-scientist and a leader in the fields of immunology and oncology. Her work spans a range of areas and her finding have changed the immunology text books by uncovering deep complexity in the immune system and re-defining the immune system’s contributions to several major human diseases. She has authored more than 300 papers, many of which are in the highest scientific journals and are amongst the most cited papers. She is on the scientific advisory board of numerous companies . She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, the most presitigious body of science in the US, in recognition of her contributions to the field of Immunology and ImmunoOncology. She is also an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, an elected fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy and the Academy of ImmunOncology and the recipient of the William Coley Award and the Leopold Griffuel cancer prize award.
Dr. Emmanuelle Passegué
Emmanuelle Passegué, Ph.D., Director, Columbia Stem Cell Initiative Alumni endowed Professor of Genetics & Development Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Dr. Emmanuelle Passegué is the endowed Alumni Professor of Genetics & Development and the Director of the Columbia Stem Cell Initiative at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. from the University Paris XI (France), trained with Drs. Erwin Wagner (IMP, Austria) and Irv Weissman (Stanford University), and was a faculty at UCSF for 11 years before joining Columbia in 2017. Dr. Passegué received a number of awards including two consecutive Outstanding Investigator Awards from the NHLBI and the 2019 William Dameshek Prize from the American Society of Hematology and was the 2019 president of the International Society of Experimental Hematology.
Dr. Denise Al Alam
Dr. Norbert Perrimon
Norbert Perrimon, PhD, James Stillman Professor of Developmental Biology in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Associate member of the Broad Institute, is a geneticist known for pioneering a number of techniques in Drosophila, as well as specific substantive contributions to signal transduction, developmental biology, and physiology.
Among the tools that he has developed are: the FLP-FRT Dominant Female Sterile technique to generate germline mosaics, the GAL4-UAS method to control gene expression both spatially and temporally, highthroughput genome wide RNAi and CRISPR screens, and proximity labeling methods to identify secreted molecules. These methods have had transformative impacts in signal transduction, development, physiology, neurobiology, and functional genomics.
Early in his career, he identified and characterized factors involved in RTK, Wnt, and JAK/STAT signaling, contributing to the elucidation of these canonical pathways. Perrimon went on discover intestinal stem cells in the adult fly gut, opening up an entire field of study to identify factors and pathways involved in stem cell homeostasis and regeneration. In more recent years, he has taken a systematic approach to identify factors involved in inter-organ communication, which are leading to a systems wide understanding of how hormonal systems are regulated by the state of various organs in homeostatic and stressed conditions.
Perrimon was born in France in 1958 and became a U.S. citizen in 2005. He received a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1983. He has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School since 1986. He received the George W. Beadle Medal form the Genetics Society of America in. 2004. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, EMBO, and National Academy of Sciences. He has trained more than 120 students and postdoctoral fellows, with most of them currently holding academic positions.
Dr. Karim Belarbi
Session II
Dr. Fabien Agenes
Dr. Fabien Agenes is a research scientist and the current National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm, France) representative in North America. He currently leads the Inserm office in Washington DC (United States).
He is in charge of strengthening ties between Inserm and North American labs, promotes the French lifescience ecosystem, he also contributes to the elaboration and the implementation of Inserm’s international strategy. From 2020 to 2024, he was based in the “Auvergne Rhône-Alpes” region, the 2nd largest in France. Fabien Agenes was in charge of the “Europe and International Affairs” portfolio. His main duty was to help Inserm scientists build international collaborative projects. He was also promoting participation of researchers to Horizon Europe programs, including ERC, Health Cluster, MSCA, and EIC.
Fabien Agenes was seconded by Inserm to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2020. He worked as “Attaché for Science and Technology” in Los Angeles CA (United States) for 5 years, and subsequently as “Science and Higher Education Attaché” in Vancouver BC (Canada) for 4 years. In both cities, his office was located at the Consulate General of France.
His scientific career began at the Pasteur Institute (Paris, France; 1993-1999). He went on to be a member of the prestigious Basel Institute for Immunology within the Hoffman-La Roche Ltd. group (Basel, Switzerland). As an Inserm research scientist, Fabien Agenes worked consecutively at the Pasteur Institute (2001-2002), at the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA Grenoble, France; 2002-2007), and at the Research Department of the University of Montréal Hospital Center (Montréal QC, Canada; 2007-2011). While in Montréal, he was also Associate Professor at the University of Montréal.
Fabien Agenes’ major contributions are towards the development of the immune system and its homeostasis. He established international collaborations and he authored 30 publications in Immunology, Neuro-immunology, and Genomics (*). He completed a doctorate thesis from Sorbonne Université (1999) and diploma of « Accreditation to Supervise Research » (HDR, Faculty of Medicine – Université Grenoble Alpes ; 2004).
Dr. Sylvette Tourmente
Between 1997 and 2013, Sylvette Tourmente served as CNRS Research Director in Life Sciences, was the PI of a team entitled: Establishment, maintenance, and epigenetic regulation of Heterochromatin, in the GReD (Genetics, reproduction and Development) laboratory in Clermont-Ferrand (France). Meanwhile, she was the communication- correspondent for the GReD, in charge of the international affairs for the doctoral school in Life Sciences, Health, Agriculture and Environment and scientific delegate for the Hceres (Research and Higher Education Evaluation Committee). In 2013, she joined the French Embassy in Budapest (Hungary) as attaché for science and higher education cooperation and was assigned in Germany as scientific attaché at the French Embassy in Berlin in 2017. On October 1, 2019, she became Director of the CNRS Office for the USA and Mexico, in Washington D.C.
Dr. William Hammond
Dr. William (Bill) Hammond – Assistant Professor of Plant Ecophysiology
William (Bill) aims to understand both the external drivers (e.g., climate, biotic agents) and internal mechanisms (e.g., plant physiological processes) that determine when trees stop living, and start dying – to answer the question, “What kills trees?”. As an Assistant Professor of Plant Ecophysiology at the University of Florida, his research crosses the scales of single xylem conduits to globally distributed forests, and involves anatomical, physiological, and climatological approaches. He is particularly passionate about the fates of big, old trees – and their disproportionate contributions to healthy forest ecosystems. More information on his laboratory and research can be found at https://ecophyslab.com.
Education:
BS in Biology, University of Central Oklahoma
PhD in Plant Biology, Oklahoma State University
Dr. Jean-Philippe Nicolaï
Jean-Philippe NICOLAÏ, Ph.D. is Attaché for Science and technology at the Consulate General of France in Boston since September 2021.
Before Dr. Nicolaï has held various leadership positions within the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), a government-funded research organization in the fields of energy, defense, life science, and digital technologies.
His main research interest has been focused on the fundamentals physics of molecular energy transfer and laser-produced plasma to later move to more applied research on digital technologies and emerging technologies for renewable energy. In 2016, Dr Nicolaï was nominated as Innovation Program Manager at CEA Bordeaux to follow and advise researchers in technology transfer and in creation of deeptech start-ups involving lasers or robotics.
In scientific literature, he has 14 publications in the fields of molecular spectroscopy and in physical and chemical characterization of plasmas. He has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Illinois Institute of Technology, an engineering degree from the École Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon now called CPE Lyon, and was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Pr. Herbert Sawin within the chemical engineering department at MIT Cambridge MA (USA).
Kasra Zarei
Kasra is a MD student at the University of Iowa and a PhD student in epidemiology and global public health in a collaborative doctoral program between the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the U.S. National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
He was a 2023-2024 Chateaubriand fellow, working at the Equipe de Recherche en Epidémiologie Sociale at IPLESP/Inserm (Institut Pierre Louis d’Epidémiologie et de Santé Publique, L’Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale).
Dr. Lisa Bernstein
Lisa Bernstein is an Academic Exchange Specialist in the European and Eurasian Programs Branch of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Academic Exchange Programs in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). She is currently responsible for Fulbright exchange programs with France, Ireland, Italy, Malta, North Macedonia, and Switzerland.
Prior to joining ECA, Lisa was Professor of English and Women’s Studies and Director of the University of Maryland Global College’s Writing Program. In previous positions at the National Endowment for Humanities and the Association of American Colleges and Universities, she worked in areas of diversity, equity, and global education. Dr. Bernstein earned her bachelor’s degree at Wellesley College, master’s in German literature and linguistics from Georgetown University, and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Maryland at College Park. She has lived and studied in France and Germany, and speaks French, German, and Italian.
Session III
Dr. Luc Lenain
Luc Lenain is the head of the Air-Sea Interaction Research Laboratory at the Marine Physical Laboratory and the Physical Oceanography Research Division at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Lenain employs a multidisciplinary approach, integrating laboratory experiments, field measurements, theoretical analysis, and numerical modeling to enhance our understanding of the complex interactions between the ocean and atmosphere.
With a deep commitment to bridging basic and applied research, he focuses on translating scientific insights into practical solutions that benefit society. Dr. Lenain has collaborated extensively with partners across academia, industry, government, and non-governmental organizations, taking on leadership roles in various local and international programs (University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System – UNOLS, Southern Ocean Observing System SOOS) and orbital satellite missions such as SWOT, a new satellite system launched in December 2023. Lenain is also now engaged in research that advances the understanding of climate impacts, developing new remote sensing approaches and meaningful projection to foster resilience in communities affected by climate change.
Dr. Marie-Nathalie Contou Carrere
Marie Contou Carrere is the Executive Director of the Rice Sustainability Institute whose mission is to develop sustainable and equitable solutions to urgent climate challenges. She is also the Founding Executive Director of the Carbon Hub, launched in 2019 as a partnership between academia, industry and federal labs, led by Rice University and with over 100 researchers in 20 different organizations across four continents. Previously, Dr. Contou-Carrere held various technical and commercial positions at INEOS Olefins & Polymers USA. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science from the University of Minnesota and a M. S. from Ecole Centrale Paris, France.
Dr. Joana Guerrin
Joana Guerrin is a researcher in Political Science at INRAE (French Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment), within SAGE Lab (Societies and Government in Europe), based in Strasbourg, France. She is developing research on water-related risk policies, with a political sociology perspective, focusing on conflict analysis and policy instruments. She is currently developing several research projects on the appropriation of the concept of Nature-based Solutions in France and the US in flood-policy sector. She was granted a Fulbright Scholarship and was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley in 2022-2023.
Dr. Emmanuel Boss
Dr. Boss was born in France and moved to Israel when he was seven. He received a BS in mathematics and physics and a MSc in oceanography in 1991 from Hebrew University, Israel, and his Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Washington in 1997. He is currently a Professor at the School of Marine Science at the University of Maine where he has been since 2002. His work focuses primarily on the use of optical methods (in the ocean and from space) to understand and constrain oceanographic processes associated with plankton, microscopic organisms that fuel the aquatic foodchange. He is a Tara Expedition coordinator and has been involved with Tara field campaigns since 2009. The research vessel Tara is a French schooner belonging to a non-profit foundation that has been working with scientists worldwide to study plankton. Funded primarily by NASA he has been contributing to a novel understanding of planktonic ecosystems and their seasonality.
Dr. Joaquim Nassar
Session IV
Dr. Rémi Soummer
Dr. Rémi Soummer is an Associate Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and the head of the Russell B. Makidon Optics Laboratory. The goal of his research in Astronomical Instrumentation is to obtain images of other Earths in the Universe, and to search for life. For over 20 years, he has developed technology and algorithms to take images and spectra of faint exoplanets in orbit around their parent stars. He invented and developed the Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph, and was the coronagraph architect for the Gemini Planet Imager and Palomar Project 1640. As part of his responsibilities at STScI, Soummer has played a leadership role in the operations of current and future NASA space missions (Hubble, Webb, and Roman Space Telescopes). He guided the early development of coronagraphic operations for Webb, and managed for a few years the Telescope Group in charge of operations for the alignment of the Webb mirrors. Since 2017, he has dedicated himself entirely to STScI’s Optics Laboratory to develop the technology needed for a future flagship mission to image other earths and search for life, which was recently recommended by the Astro 2020 Decadal Survey.
Dr. Luc Julia
Dr. Pierre Deymier
Pierre A. Deymier is a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Arizona. He is Director of the US National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded New Frontiers of Sound Science and Technology Center. He is also a faculty member in the BIO5 Institute, biomedical engineering program and applied mathematics graduate interdisciplinary program. He was Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering from 2011 to 2021 and Director of the School of Sustainable Engineered Systems during the period 2009-2017. He was a Founding Dean and served as Interim Associate Dean (2021-2023) of the Arizona College of Technology at Hebei University of Technology (HEBUT), Tianjin, China. Deymier received his PhD from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 and subsequently joined the University of Arizona. He received an Engineering Degree (1982), in Materials Science from the Institut des Sciences de l’Ingénieur, Université des Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc, Montpellier, France.
Dr. Martial Hébert
Martial Hebert is a University Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He currently serves as Dean of the School of Computer Science and he previously served as Director of the Robotics Institute, one of the seven academic departments in the School of Computer Science.His research interests include computer vision and robotics, especially recognition in images and video data, model building and object recognition from 3D data, and perception for autonomous robots.
