2023  ICBS Global Lectureship Awardee

Raphaël Rodriguez, PhD, FRSC, is a Research Director at the CNRS and a Senior Principal Investigator at Institut Curie where he holds the Marie Curie Chair of Chemical Biology. He trained as a PhD student, then a postdoctoral scientist under the mentorships of Sir J. E. Baldwin (Oxford, 2004) and Sir S. Balasubramanian (Cambridge, 2005) from whom he acquired the knowledge of chemistry. He then trained in biology with Sir S. P. Jackson (Cambridge, 2009) with whom he co-founded Adrestia Therapeutics, later acquired by Insmed. At the age of 32, he established his laboratory at ICSN (Gif-sur-Yvette, 2012). He then moved to Institut Curie (Paris, 2015) to investigate the molecular bases underlying the biology of cancer. There, Rodriguez discovered the central role metals in the regulation of cell plasticity. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and received a Knighthood of the National Order of Merit from Jean-Marie Lehn on behalf of French President Emmanuel Macron. He has received several accolades for his scientific contribution including the Klaus Grohe Prize, Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award, Prix Lacassagne (Collège de France) and Grand Prix Charles Defforey (Institut de France). In 2018, he flew from Corbonod (France) to Saint Louis (Senegal) together with his brother in a Shark aircraft following the route of Mermoz and Saint-Exupéry. In 2009, he raced the Nice Ironman to support women in Zimbabwe under the auspice of Amnesty International. He was a fire fighter and paramedic in his youth.

Statement
By accepting this award, I ambition to fully support the continuation and development of ICBS to the best of my ability.

The Global Lectureship award lecture: "Chemical Control of Cell Plasticity”