François Taddei

After having studied mostly math, physics and engineering in the French “grandes écoles” Ecole Polytechnique (1986-1989) and ENGREF (1989-1991), he has held a tenured position as a higher civil servant of the French Agriculture Administration (Ministère de l’Agriculture, Paris) since 1991. Being so early on a tenured track has allowed him to develop original interdisciplinary projects, although at the cost of having to work as a civil servant in France for at least 10 years. After his PhD in molecular genetics in 1995, he was able to broaden his scientific education, learning new concepts and techniques while visiting the labs of colleagues. He spent his postdoctoral training with the late John Maynard-Smith in Sussex (1996) and with his colleague Pierre-Henri Gouyon in Orsay (1997), focusing on population genetics and evolution. In addition, he had the opportunity to witness the development of the novel tools pioneered in the lab of physics & biology lead by Stan Leibler in Rockfeller (2001) or Ouyang Qi in Peking University in 2007. Since 1997, he has held the position of a full-time research scientist in INSERM.

Working at the interface between many disciplines, he had the privilege to present his results to a wide diversity of audiences, including mathematicians, computer scientists, system biologists, ecologists, microbiologists, physicists, demographers, geneticists and evolutionary biologists.

He also holds the position of Head of the interdisciplinary (M2) master program for life sciences, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris 7 University and Paris 5 Universities, and is the Founder of the Paris Interdisciplinary college (Faculty of Medecine, Paris 5), the “Festival de sciences Paris-Montagne” and the Founder of the interdisciplinary graduate school: life frontiers.

He is the author of an OECD's report "Training creative and collaborative knowledge-builders: a major challenge for 21st century education"