On April 16, the CNRS announced the recipients of its 2026 medals. Among them are three members of ENS de Lyon laboratories: Sébastien Manneville, professor at LPENSL (silver medal); Charlotte Kirchhelle, an INRAE research fellow at the RDP laboratory (bronze medal); and Lucien Derainne, a junior professor at IHRIM (bronze medal).
Every year since 1954, the CNRS has honored members of the French academic community with awards that recognize the excellence of their work and their contributions to advancing research, promoting its influence, and expanding knowledge across the many fields covered by sciences and humanities. For the 2026 awards, the CNRS awarded 26 silver medals and 46 bronze medals. Among the recipients are four members of ENS de Lyon, whom we invite you to discover here.
Sébastien Manneville, CNRS Silver Medalist
Sébastien Manneville, a professor at the Physics Laboratory of ENS de Lyon (LPENSL – CNRS / ENS de Lyon), is a specialist in soft matter. He studies these materials with puzzling properties, which can behave as both solids and liquids depending on the stresses applied to them. To this end, he develops experimental tools that combine mechanical measurements and ultrasonic imaging to probe their behavior as they flow. He also tracks their transformations at the mesoscopic level, where structures of intermediate size—between molecules and the material itself—form.
Read his full profile on the CNRS website
Discover all the 2026 CNRS silver medals recipients
Charlotte Kirchhelle, CNRS Bronze Medalist
Charlotte Kirchhelle, a research fellow at INRAE, left the University of Oxford in 2021 to join the Plant Reproduction and Development Laboratory (RDP – CNRS / ENS de Lyon / INRAE) in Lyon. There, she continues her research into how plants develop organs with stable and reproducible shapes. Her answer lies in a long-neglected feature: cell edges, where mechanical stresses are concentrated. Her team has shown that these are active sites.
Read her full profile on the CNRS website
Lucien Derainne, CNRS Bronze Medalist
Lucien Derainne, an assistant professor at the Institute for the History of Representations and Ideas in Modernity (IHRIM – CNRS / ENS de Lyon / Université Lumière Lyon 2 / Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne / Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 / Université Clermont Auvergne), joined IHRIM in a newly created chair in November 2024. He is particularly interested in the connections and cross-influences between literature and the history of science, especially the ways in which literature evokes science or scientific processes. The 18th and 19th centuries are his primary focus, and in particular “the moment of 1800,” which marks the juncture between them: the point at which literature and science diverge, and modern scientific norms begin to take shape.