Biosketch

Emmanuelle Renard is Senior Associate Professor at the University Aix-Marseille, France. She began her scientific carrier in ML Cariou’s lab (CNRS Gif sur Yvette, France) in 1996, where she specialized in molecular evolution, focusing on the evolution of multigenic families. She obtained her PhD from the University of Tours (France) in February 2000. She was then recruited for two years as assistant lecturer at the University Paris-Sud Orsay, where she teached animal biology and worked in P. Forterre’s team. She obtained an assistant professor position at the University of Aix-Marseille (end 2001). Since then she teaches animal biology, evolutionary biology and developmental biology at different levels. She has positive experience in management: head of a molecular facility lab with3 technicians, head of 4 teaching units, coordination of a PICS project grouping 3 French and 1 Australian labs, co-supervision of >20 undergraduate internships and of 4 PhD students. Her commitment in her research projects was recognized by her university in 2007 (scientific excellence reward) and she won a two-year sabbatical grant from the CNRS which she took in A. le Bivic’s team (IBDM, France, fall 2017- fall 2019) to focus on sponge epithelia. She obtained the highest French universitary diploma (HDR, accreditation to manage researches) from the University of Aix-Marseille (2019). Mainly interested in animal evolution, she develops projects aiming at understanding animal body plan evolution by a comparative study of gene content and gene functions in sponges (evo-devo research field). She co-authored 20 publications in ACLI journals (1441 citations hI 16), 3 online encyclopedia chapters, 3 online protocoles, 3 book chapters (+ 2 in press) and 44 communications in international conferences.