Dr Alice Meunier
Dr Alice Meunier is CNRS Director of Research at the Institut de Biologie de l’ENS. With insightful students and colleagues, she combined cell biology, different kind of microscopies and developmental biology to understand how multiciliated cells escape the centriole number control program to massively amplify these organelles during their differentiation, and form the ciliary tuft required to propel physiological fluids. They showed that instead of implementing a specific developmental program, they reuse the actors of centriole duplication and cell division to carry out their differentiation. They are now seeking to characterize the actors of this cell cycle diversion. Alice Meunier was also formally associated professor at Ecole Polytechnique in charge of teaching biotechnologies. She resigned after realizing that the knowledge produced by fundamental research in biology could be used for the better, but also for the worst, and that the acceleration we are observing in our everyday life, was also touching the research community. She therefore decided to dedicate part of her time to explore how to make a research respecting the equilibrium of ecosystems, and compatible with a convivial human society. To educate herself in this direction, she got involved in different research communities (mouvement pour les savoirs engagés et reliés, écopolien, scientifiques en rébellion, labo1p5).