My name is Quentin, and I have been a PhD student in the Alzari lab since 2018.
I grew up in the French city of Lyon, home of some of the best French desserts (although I may be biased). I arrived in Paris in 2014 and started a Master of Engineering at AgroParisTech, where I specialized in cellular and molecular bioengineering. After a year in Europe interning in two different labs (in the MRC-LMB in Cambridge and in the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin), I was convinced I wanted to work in research, focusing on macromolecular complexes in pathogenic bacteria. I completed a Master of Science in microbiology at the Université Paris 6 in parallel with my MEng, and attended the historical microbiology class of the Institut Pasteur. I did my Master thesis in the lab of Pedro Alzari, under the supervision of Anne Marie Wehenkel. I learned about Actinobacteria and crystallography, and was eager to continue working on molecular mechanisms of cell division.
My PhD project is the characterization of the molecular architecture of the cell division machinery in Actinobacteria. I am using a combinatory approach of cellular microbiology, structural biology and biochemistry in order to elucidate the inner workings of cell division.
Outside of the lab, I have a strong interest in education and pop-science. I teach enzymology and structural biology at the Université de Paris to undergrad students. I was invited in fall 2019 by the association Science toi! to give a conference on antibiotics in the city of Riom, Puy-de-Dôme. I am also driven by philosophy and ethics of sciences. I was awarded the Young Researcher’s Scientific Integrity Prize in 2019 by the French Society of Medical Ethics the Price for a short essay on predatory journals.
