Valérie Doye becomes the new Director of the Institut Jacques Monod as of September 1, 2023, succeeding Michel Werner, who has held this position since 2018. She is assisted by new deputy director Nicolas Minc.
Valérie Doye is Director of Research at the Institut Jacques Monod, and head of the “Non -conventional functions of nuclear pores” team. Nicolas Minc is Director of Research at the Institut Jacques Monod, head of the “Cell spatial organization” team.
Valérie Doye
After defending her doctoral thesis in 1991 at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie on the cellular differentiation of neurons, Valérie Doye carried out a post-doc until 1994 at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Heidelberg, Germany). There, she specialized in the components of nuclear pores, the nucleoporins, and their role in transport between cytoplasm and nucleus. In 1994, she joined the CNRS and went on to develop her research team at the Institut Curie, where she characterized the role of nucleoporins in nuclear pore assembly, as well as some of their unconventional functions in cell division and genome integrity. In 2008, she set up her team at the Institut Jacques Monod. She was awarded in 2009 the CNRS silver medal for her research work. In charge of the cell biology program and then member of the Institut Jacques Monod management committee, she became its deputy director in 2020.
Currently, the Doye team is studying the functions of nucleoporins in nuclear pore assembly, signaling and gene regulation during cell differentiation. To this end, the team uses pluripotent stem cells and their differentiated derivatives, notably in the form of organoids. This work should help us to understand why, despite the universal role of nuclear pores in all nucleated cells, certain nucleoporins are linked to human hereditary diseases affecting specific cell types and organs.
Nicolas Minc
Nicolas Minc is a physicist and biologist. After defending his doctoral thesis at the Institut Curie in 2005, he completed a post-doc at Colombia University (New York, USA), focusing on cell morphogenesis in yeast and sea urchin embryos, combining approaches from physics. In 2013, he set up his “Cell Spatial Organization” research team at the Institut Jacques Monod. That same year, he was awarded the Prix Emergence(s) by the City of Paris. In 2014, he won the ERC Consolidator grant for the FORCASTER project: Force, Motion and Positioning of MT asters, and in 2018, he was awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal.
Currently, the Minc team is studying how cells establish their particular morphology and internal organization in order to perform their given functions. The team takes a broad, multidisciplinary approach to this problem, using different organisms to identify the general principles that control cell morphogenesis. A characteristic of the team is the integration and development of cutting-edge quantitative approaches, such as microfabrication, mathematical modeling and image analysis tools, to address the fundamental questions of morphogenesis. To achieve these goals, the Minc team combines expertise from different fields, including chemistry, biology and physics.
