Cell scientist to watch – Jean-Léon Maître

ABSTRACT

Jean-Léon Maître studied biology at the University of Bordeaux, France, and then joined the laboratory of Carl-Philipp Heisenberg at the Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics (Dresden, Germany) and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (Klosterneuburg, Austria) for his PhD on cell cortex tension and cell adhesion during zebrafish gastrulation. In 2013, Jean-Léon moved to the EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, to work as a postdoc with a Marie Curie IntraEuropean and EMBO Long-Term Fellowship with Takashi Hiiragi on the mechanics of the pre-implantation embryo in the mouse. He established his own research group as a CNRS researcher at the Institut Curie (Paris, France) in the Genetics and Developmental Biology unit in 2016 and received an ERC Starting Grant in 2017. Jean-Léon's research group is interested in mammalian pre-implantation development, with a focus on cell mechanics and cell–cell interactions.