Our scientific board
Thierry Heulin
DR CNRS
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Thierry Heulin is a research director at the CNRS. He holds a PhD in engineering from the École Nationale Supérieure Agronomique et des Industries Alimentaires (ENSAIA) in Nancy (1983) and an Habilitation to Direct Research from the University of Nancy I (1991). Bronze medal of the CNRS (1990).
He was Director of the UMR 7265 BVME "Plant Biology and Environmental Microbiology" (CEA/CNRS/Aix-Marseille II) from 2003 to 2011. He was Director of the Institute of Environmental Biology and Biotechnology (iBEB-CEA-DSV, Cadarache) from 2007 to 2016. He was an appointed member of CoNRS Section 29 (2012-16). He was a member of the Scientific Council of the iNEE-CNRS (2015-2018), President of the CS de France Génomique (2012-2017).
He has been interested in the ecology of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and is currently working on exopolysaccharide-producing bacteria in the rhizosphere of cultivated plants (diversity, taxonomy, physiology, genetics). He has published about 100 publications on about ten rhizospheric bacterial species with plant growth promoting properties. He is co-author of 3 patents, two of which are exploited.
He is currently Director of FR ECCOREV (Continental Ecosystem and Environmental Risks), Chairman of the CS of Labex DRIIHM, member of several other scientific councils (Lascaux, CESAB-FRB, Labex DRIIHM), member representing the CEA at the CPS of the AllEnvi Alliance, member of the Standing Group of Experts at GPRADE (ASN), member of the International Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of AnaEE-F and the International Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of France Génomique.
He is co-author of 93 articles published in international journals (Google Scholar: h-index : 43 with 4950 citations).
Wafa Achouak
DR CNRS
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Wafa Achouak is a research director at the CNRS and has been directing the Laboratoire d'Écologie Microbienne de la Rhizosphère et de l'Environnement Extrême (LEMiRE) at the CEA of Cadarache since 2004. Her current research focuses on the adaptive response of bacteria to environmental fluctuations, the role of non-coding regulatory RNAs in plant-bacterial molecular interactions, the regulation and expression of phytobeneficial traits of bacteria associated with plant roots and their exploitation for environmentally friendly agricultural applications. She has been Senior Editor of the journal Microbiology since 2015; member of the scientific committee of the national programme "Coastal and Continental Ecosphere (EC2CO)": ECOtoxicology, ecoDYNamics of Contaminants (ECODYN); member of the Steering Committee and Scientific Committee of the "Research Federation" ECCOREV; member of Labex SERENADE and GDR-i F-USA i-Ceint, and member of the CSS INRA BIHASC. She is co-author of 83 articles published in international journals (Google Scholar: h-index : 33 with 3570 citations).
Mohamed Barakat
IR CNRS
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Mohamed Barakat is a research engineer at the CNRS. He was responsible for the neurobiology-endocrinology sector of the Pascal database (1989-1996, INIST-CNRS). He joined LEMIRE (1996) to study plant-bacteria interactions, then the cell cycle of Ramlibacter tataouinensis and the adaptation mechanisms of this model bacterium to desert life and its resistance to desiccation. After one year of training as part of a DESS (University of Marseille), he is currently working on bioinformatics research, the analysis of data from so-called "omics" technologies and the construction of genomics and proteomics databases dedicated to microbiology and microbial ecology.
Mohamed Barakat obtained a doctorate in neurobiology at the University of Nancy (1989), as well as a DESS in computer science, option bioinformatics at the University of Marseille (2003).