Advisors and Instructors

From the creation of the team in January until now, we have been advised and helped by several persons: teachers, researchers, former members of iGEM teams.
Without their help and advice, our work would have been a lot harder in every aspect of this project. For the scientific part of course, but also for other matters like planning, logistics... That is why we wanted to especially thank all of them.
You can read their presentations below for further information:

Robert Baptist, Geoffrey Bouchage, Franz Bruckert, Alexandre Dawid, Valérie Forest, Hans Geiselmann, Hidde de Jong, Pierre Pautré, Stéphane Pinhal, Delphine Ropers, Marianne Weidenhaupt

CEA-LETI, Minatec
Research Director

Robert Baptist joined CEA-LETI, a laboratory for microelectronics, in 1982. His main research interest was solid state physics and information and their applications to micro-nano technologies. Working on nano-sciences since 2000 opened him new horizons thanks to the study of hybrid materials. The door was opened to bacteria! In 2010 he participated to the creation of the first iGEM group in Grenoble and learned a lot about the relationship of computers to living cells and also about pedagogy! Learning so much just before retiring is a big pleasure in a professional career!

Grenoble INP - Phelma


My first iGEM experience was in 2011 as a student in the first iGEM Grenoble team. It was a wonderful experience and skills I developped really helped me to find my actual and first job. iGEM is much more than a synthetic biology competition, it's a life and professional experience which gives you several advantages for a future career. That's why I'm still here, since 2012, as an advisor to try to help new students to learn as much as possible, further than technical skills.

Grenoble INP
Teacher researcher in biology

To my point of view, the most interesting aspect of the iGEM project is the collective construction of a new way of doing bioengineering. The modular approach is clearly more efficient in terms of experimental effort and it also helps understanding how cellular functions are organized. Implementing new functions in bacteria should in turn help to build up more efficient ways to represent the living beings complexity. Besides that, I like and challenges and iGEM is all of this.

Grenoble University
Teacher researcher in physics and biology

As an engineer and physicist from background, I very early got fascinated by the ingenious and exquisite molecular mechanisms at play in living systems. After developing instruments to study genetic recombination at the single molecule level, I moved to the field of bioengineering in microorganisms. My current research combines computational and experimental approaches to engineer genetic systems in bacteria, more specifically regulatory functions in genetic circuits, using the versatility of RNA and RNA-based mechanisms, e.g. riboswitches. Joining quantitative models and experimental techniques at the bio-molecular level with the diversity at hand in Nature stimulates the imagination and opens up new pathways for innovation. Similarly, the iGEM competition challenges our way of thinking about the living and embarks an interdisciplinary team of talented students through the whole process of a creative project, from the vision to the achievement. A very stimulating and enrich! ing scientific and human experience.

ENSM Saint-Etienne
PhD, Teacher Researcher in biology

Graduated in Biologic and Medical Engineering, I am assistant Professor at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne. I especially work in the field of nanotechnologies, but our engineering school is also highly interested in the development of synthetic biology and strongly believes in its outstanding applications. The iGEM competition gives us the opportunity to work in close collaboration with other regional and international institutions in a very interdisciplinary field. This exceptional experience is highly interesting, motivating and rewarding for students and advisors both on scientific and human aspects.

Grenoble University
Teacher researcher in microbiology

I am a microbiologist at the university of Grenoble. In the past, I have combined biophysics, molecular biology and bacteriology to understand the functioning of Escherichia coli. More recently, in a systems biology approach, I have used precise measurements of gene expression to test predictions of mathematical models of the corresponding regulatory system. Synthetic biology, and thus iGEM, is the next step in understanding biological systems: if we really understand the functioning of a system, we can modify its behavior. In iGEM we move from designing a desired behavior to instantiating the network in the real organism: a formidable challenge in interdisciplinary research and a very stimulating endeavor, in large parts thanks to a team of excellent and motivated students from different backgrounds.

Inria Grenoble - Rhônes-Alpes
PhD in computer science, University of Twente, the Netherlands

An engineer by training, I like to do interdisciplinary research, at the interface of biology, computer science, and mathematics. More specifically, since a number of years I have been interested in the modeling of the regulatory networks controlling the functioning of bacteria. Synthetic biology proposes an interesting approach for better understanding these networks: can we modify the network connections so as to extend the behavioral repertoire of bacterial cells? The iGEM competition addresses these questions in an original way, at the same time playful and highly demanding.

Pierre Pautré

Grenoble University Master 2 studies in physiologic and epigenetic development

I am mainly interested in microbiology and genetics. I think that the multidisciplinary approach proposed by iGEM is a great way to share, open new horizons and learn to work in teams. Last year I was in the Grenoble team and I hope I can share this experience with the iGEM Grenoble-EMSE-LSU team.

Stéphane Pinhal

LAPM
PhD student in Systems and Synthetic Biology

Interested in engineering the living, I joined the iGEM Paris Liliane Bettencourt 2010 team. I think iGEM is very formative on both scientific and human side. So I couldn't miss this adventure. We won the Best Foundational Advance Prize. In 2011, I was the advisor of the iGEM Grenoble team. It was a new challenge because it was the first participation of a team from Grenoble. I shared my experience with them and help them to reach the Final. In order to have a place where you can talk and share about Synthetic Biology, I've founded the first club of Synthetic Biology in Grenoble: SynBioGre. In 2012, I decided to renew this experience and I was also an advisor of the iGEM Grenoble team. This year, I'm an advisor of the iGEM Grenoble-EMSE-LSU team … again! Rise and shine Grenoble 2013 ! ;)

Inria Grenoble - Rhônes-Alpes
Researcher in system biology

Graduated in Biochemistry, I developed a strong interest for pluridisciplinarity in the course of my training. I received a PhD in Molecular Biology from Nancy University for my work on the regulation of HIV-1 RNA alternative splicing by modeling and experimental approaches. I am now a researcher within the Systems Biology group Ibis at Inria Grenoble - Rhône-Alpes, a French research institute in computer science and control. I work on the mathematical modeling and experimental validation of biochemical regulatory networks involved in bacterial adaptation to environmental cues.

Grenoble INP
Teacher researcher in biology and immunology

I am a biology and immunology teacher at the Grenoble Institute of Technology-Phelma. One of the important points of my teaching is to train students to be able to work at the interface of different scientific disciplines. iGEM is a very exciting challenge that plunges us straight into interdisciplinarity and puts teachers and students face to face with what we aim for in our daily work. Personally I worked in bacterial genetics during my PhD, a field I left some 15 years ago and which I am more than happy to work in again with our team.