At the biennial international conference of the International Association of Sexual Plant Reproduction Research (IASPRR), Thomas Widiez, a researcher at the Plant Reproduction and Development Laboratory (ENS de Lyon/INRAE/CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1), was awarded the Early Career Research Award in Plant Reproduction in September 2026.

This internationally renowned award honors researchers whose work, conducted during the first ten years of their careers, has made a significant contribution to advancing knowledge of plant reproduction.

“It is, of course, a great joy and a great honor to receive this recognition from the scientific community,” said Thomas Widiez. “Science is a collective endeavor, and I am deeply grateful to everyone on the team and my collaborators who helped make these discoveries possible.”

Unraveling the mechanisms that enable plants to reproduce and multiply

As a member of the RDP’s “Seed Development” team, Thomas Widiez studies the mechanisms that govern plant reproduction and development, with a particular focus on those involved in embryo and seed formation. His work focuses particularly on understanding how certain reproductive processes can lead to the formation of haploid embryos—that is, embryos with only a single set of chromosomes derived from a single parent. In this regard, his research has made it possible to identify and characterize several molecular mechanisms involved in this phenomenon in maize, providing new fundamental insights into plant reproduction.

In 2022, Thomas Widiez had already been awarded the Limagrain Prize by the French Academy of Agriculture. He now looks forward to the next phase of his career with great enthusiasm: “I am fortunate to be a tenured researcher and to be able to continue my research as a natural extension of this initial work. This award encourages me to keep unraveling the fundamental mechanisms that enable plants to reproduce and multiply.”