Since November 2023, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Francis Crick Institute (London), in the Difrisco lab of Theoretical Biology. Previously, I was a FSMP postdoctoral fellow at the department of Applied Mathematics (MAP5) of the University of Paris, after defending my PhD of Mathematics in July 2022, under the supervision of Vincent Calvez (ICJ, CNRS) and Sepideh Mirrahimi (IMAG, CNRS, Montpellier, France). I hold a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the École Normale Supérieure (ÉNS) de Lyon and a M.Sc. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from the Claude Bernard University of Lyon and the ÉNS de Lyon.
From 2022 to 2024, I am a serving member of the Graduate Students Advisory Council (GSAC) of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE). As such, I review applications for the Lewontin Awards (for early PhD students) and Rosemary Grant Awards (advanced PhD students) offered yearly by SSE. I also organize workshops for graduate students during the annual meeting “Evolution”.
My research interest lies at the interface between evolutionary biology and mathematical models of population dynamics (mainly deterministic - PDEs). I believe that deterministic mathematical approaches are insightful to explain complex trait dynamics arising from the interplay of ecological and evolutive phenomena in large populations and I like to build and analyse models that shed new lights on evolutionary questions.
What? During my PhD, I have investigated specifically the influence of sexual reproduction (as a contrast to asexual, or clonal, reproduction) on sptial eco-evolutionary dynamics in various settings (fragmented environment, invasive species, changing environments etc…), through quantitative genetic models. I am also very interested by the modelling of the evolution of genetic architecture and intricate gene-traits associations.
Why? Although sexual reproduction is ubiquitous in multi-cellular organisms (plants, animals, fungi), there is only a handful of techniques that are developed to analyse the eco-evolutionary fate of large sexually reproducing populations characterized by a quantitative trait, like the size of individuals, the stamina of their muscles etc… One of the main analytical difficulties relates to how sexual reproduction shapes the inheritance process of such complex traits resulting from a large number of genes contributions, even if each individual gene’s inheritance is well understood. Moreover, as an offspring’s trait can be far from both its parents’ traits, this inheritance process from one generation to the next presents new mathematical challenges, as it involves non-local models for long-range interactions.
I am very fortunate and grateful for having spent a year visiting Prof. Sarah Otto’s lab in the Biodiversity Research Center, UBC, Vancouver, before and during my first year of PhD (2019-2020). In immersion, I learned more directly about evolutionary biologists’ interests and questions, in particular about theoretical relationships between population genetic and quantitative genetic models. I am thrilled about our vivid overseas collaboration and invite you to consult our recent paper The best of both worlds: combining population genetic and quantitative genetic models (see link below), that proposes a composite model that bridges the two fields.
I aknowledge that, during that time, I have lived and worked in the traditional, unceded, and occupied territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.