Composition d'équipe

The lab in 2025

Aurèle Piazza (PI, DR CNRS)

Aurèle obtained his PhD in Genetics in 2012 from the Univeristy Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris for his research on DNA secondary structures conducted in the laboratory of Alain Nicolas at the Institut Curie. For his post-doc he joined the laboratory of Wolf-Dietrich Heyer at the University of California in Davis to study the core steps of homologous recombination. In 2017 he returned to France in the laboratory of Romain Koszul at the Intitut Pasteur where he started to investigate the reciprocal influences of the spatial organization of chromatin in the nucleus and the DNA break repair process. He obtained a permanent research position at the CNRS in 2018. In 2019, he received funding from the CNRS (Momentum) and the European Union (ERC) to develop these projects in his own research group.

Bluesky: aurelepiazza.bsky.app

Agnès Dumont (Research engineer CNRS)

Agnes obtained her Master in cellular and molecular biology in 2004. She then started working in the virology field, first in a clinical study about HHV8 detection in transplant organs in France, and then at the Hong Kong Pasteur Institute where she developed a multiplex flu serological test. in 2010, she joined the Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics Core Facility in Montreal, where she became  specialized in next-generation sequencing. After a short stay in Merabet and Yvert’s lab at the Ecole Normale Superieure of Lyon, she is joining us to discover the pleasure and secrets of the best model organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae!

Vinciane Piveteau (PhD student)

Vinciane loved it so much during her M2 internship that she decided to extend her stay for 3 more years, to do her PhD! How lucky for us! Vinciane works on the interplay between spatial chromatin organization and homology search, and its consequence on genome stability in S. cerevisiae.

Nicolas Mendiboure (PhD student)

Nicolas has had such a great time modelling the recombination pathway during his M1 internship that he is back for more, over a full PhD! He will put his bioinformatics and modelling skills, acquired at the INSA in Lyon, to understand in quantitative terms the nooks and crannies of recombination, chromosome mechanics, and their interplay.

Chloé Dupont (Research engineer)

Chloé is a true recombination and yeast lover, trained for her PhD by Laurent Maloisel and Eric Coic in one of the few hardcore lab on the topic in France. She will work together with Vinciane on an ARC-funded project trying to understand how recombination is regulated by the 3D organization of the genome and how dysregulation of this organization impact genome stability. Welcome Chloé!

Romain Bulteau (Research engineer)

Romain is known as the white wolf at the LBMC: he did a terrific PhD with Mirko Francesconi and made a name for himself during the LBMC seminars, where he always had excellent questions. We are very fortunate to have recruited him after a brief hop in the private sector (spoiler: it was not much fun!) to work alongside Vinciane in the development of a pipeline for analysing repeat-mediated chromosomal rearrangements in S. cerevisiae.

Kartik Sharma (Undergraduate student, IISER Tirupati):

Kartik did his Master internship in the lab in 2025 from IISER Tirupati. He seemed to have liked it enough that he fended off the French bureaucraty a second time to come and do his PhD with us! He works on the regulation of meiotic recombination by chromosome structure and organization using tools he contributed to developed with Vinciane and Agnès in his internship.

Rowin Appanah (Post-doctoral fellow):

Rowin is a black-belt yeast geneticist with extensive experience in mechanisms of DNA replication, repair and genome maintenance through both his PhD in the De Piccoli lab (Warwik University) and his post-doc in the Ulrich Rass lab (Sussex University). He will now employ all his skills to tackle the role of chromatin in regulating the search for homology during DNA break repair by homologous recombination.

Lab alumni:

• 2025: Jérôme Savocco (Post-doctoral researcher)
• 2025: Yasmina Djeghmoum (PhD student) - Graduated
• 2025: Angel Sarrazin (M2 student Lyon) - passed (14/20)
• 2024: Yelene Etter (M2 student Paris Saclay) - honors (16.2/20)
• 2023: Lola Cottaz (L3 student Universite Catho de Lyon)
• 2023: Pauline Le Corre (INSA M1 bioinformatics student) - honors (20/20)
• 2022: Loqmen Anani (ENS L3 student)
• 2021: Schayma Ben Marzougui (ENSTA Paris M2 maths student) - honors (16/20)
• 2021: Nicolas Mendiboure (INSA M1 bioinformatics student) - honors (19.4/20)
• 2021: Vinciane Piveteau (ENS M2 biology student) - honors (16/20)
• 2020: Hélène Bordelet (post-doc), now postdoc in Romain Koszul's lab (Institut Pasteur) and close collaborator :)