# Science Is Fun: From COVID to the Mass Spectrometer
Welcome to the program co-produced by the University of Montpellier and Divergence-FM, which takes you on a tour of the laboratories of the Muse Archipelago. Our guest today is Jacques Reynes, an infectious disease specialist and head of the Infectious and Tropical Diseases Department at Montpellier University Hospital. In the second half of the program, Christophe Hirtz introduces you to the mass spectrometer.
This week, we’re setting out on a turbulent journey into the heart of the COVID-19 storm. Eight months after the outbreak began, France is still holding its breath in anticipation of a possible second wave. Eight months during which the entire scientific community has remained on the job in an unprecedented research effort to explore this new disease and tackle not only the health crisis but also the economic and social tsunami it has triggered.
In itsthirteenth issue, devoted entirely to COVID-19 and its consequences, thepopular science magazine LUM features virologists, epidemiologists, clinicians, ecologists, chemists, computer scientists, economists, and anthropologists from Montpellier. Our guest today is Jacques Reynes, an infectious disease specialist and head of the Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at Montpellier University Hospital.
In the second half of the program, the segment “Inside the Machine Room” takes you to the clinical proteomics platform in Montpellier, where Christophe Hirtz, its director, and Sylvain Lehmann, director ofthe Institute of Neurosciences in Montpellier, introduce us to a strange machine: the mass spectrometer.
No Amrin column this week, but instead “A Message in a Bottle.” The concept is simple: we ask researchers to adopt the perspective of their subject of study and write a short message to us humans. And for this first installment, Valérie Guillard and Nathalie Gontard from Inserm talk to us about cloth masks and plastic masks.
Science Is Fun—you’ve got the ticket, let’s go!
Production: University of Montpellier and Divergence-fm
Host: Lucie Lecherbonnier
Interview and Reporting: Aline Périault
Editing: Lucie Lecherbonnier
Column: Amrin Nagamia
Tune in to the show “A LUM LA SCIENCE” on Divergence FM 93.9
