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, Hidde de Jong, Hans Geiselmann, Pierre Pautré, Stéphane Pinhal, Delphine Ropers, Marianne Weidenhaupt

Robert Baptist

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!

Geoffrey Bouchage

Grenoble INP - Phelma


"Trust me, I'm an engineer."

Franz Bruckert

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.

Hidde de Jong

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.

Hans Geiselmann

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.

Pierre Pautré

Stéphane Pinhal

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 ! ;)

Delphine Ropers

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.

Marianne Weidenhaupt

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.