Nicolas Dray is working on the mechanisms regulating the spatiotemporal dynamic of adult neural stem cells (aNSC) in the telencephalon. How is control the activation of a quiescence neural stem cell within a population of ‘equivalent’ cells?
Nicolas is also interested in the development of new technologies to live image tissues at the cellular level and molecular signaling pathways.
Nicolas was initially trained in oceanography and biochemistry. He received his PhD in 2008 from the University Paris Sud 11. During his thesis in Guillaume Balavoine and Michel Vervoort’s laboratory (CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette) he worked in the evo-devo field on a rather old question in biology: the evolution of the segmentation among Bilaterians.
For his postdoc he moved to Scott Holley’s laboratory at Yale University (USA) where he worked on the mechanisms driving trunk elongation during Zebrafish development. In particular, and in collaboration with physicists, he studied the role of cell-fibronectin interactions in tissue mechanics.
After a short second postdoc in Laure Bally-Cuif’s laboratory he was recruited in 2015 as a permanent CNRS researcher.
