Biography

A trained biologist, Marie Sémon defended a thesis at Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 – Relations between the organization of the genome and the expression of genes in mammals – under the supervision of Laurent Duret. She was recruited at ENS de Lyon in 2007, joining the Laboratory of Biology and Modelling of Cell (LBMC), where she co-leads the Comparative and Integrative Genomics of Organ Development (CIGOGNE) team with Sophie Pantalacci (CNRS reearcher). Her research themes, studying molecular evolution, focused on the organization of animal genomes and their reorganization after duplication.

Professor of universities, Marie Sémon is really involved in the dynamics of the Department of biology, which she has taken on as director, as well as organizing community reach initiatives for the general public, aiming at making science accessible to as many people as possible and fighting against gender bias from the earliest age (e.g. the event "Stepping into a researcher’s shoes").

In 2023, she was awarded an ERC Consolidator grant for the PLEIOTROPY project - Evaluating how pleiotropy influences genetic, developmental and morphological evolution by using rodent teeth, which she will carry out with her team at LBMC.