Portraits of theUM

During his fall 2023 residency in Montpellier through the MAK’IT (Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute on Transitions) program at theUM, ecologist Jean-Paul Metzger, a professor at the University of São Paulo, continued his research—which bridges ecology and quality of life—in collaboration with his French colleagues.

With the NEMESIS project, mathematician Daniele Di Pietro has just secured €7.8 million in ERC Synergy funding. His goal: to overcome current technological barriers in the numerical simulation of complex physical problems. This is a major achievement for Alexandre Grothendieck, director of the Montpellier institute, who recounts his journey in this discipline—one he never intended to pursue.

Paul Antonio, a paleomagnetism researcher at the Montpellier Geosciences Laboratory, has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) grant for proposing a new experimental method to refine the dating of the Earth’s inner core.

Oriol Amat is a professor of economics at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where he also served as rector. He is considered an expert in financial accounting, management accounting, and corporate fraud. On September 20, the University of Montpellier was pleased to award him an honorary doctorate.

Erika Burioli is studying cancer cells capable of spreading into the environment and infecting foreign organisms. The researcher at the Host-Pathogen-Environment Interactions (IHPE) laboratory was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) grant in September 2023 to continue her work on bivalves.

With her young team specializing in inflammatory immune mechanisms at the Montpellier Institute of Molecular Genetics (IGMM), Nadine Laguette has enjoyed a string of successes. Over the past ten years, she has made several key discoveries and secured no fewer than three prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grants. In late 2022, she received the cancer research award from the Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation of the Institut de France.