About Françoise

Françoise is a biologist, working at the interface between biology and soft matter physics. Her research interests are mainly directed towards self-assembly phenomena in DNA and chromatin organization. After a PhD from the University Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris), she entered CNRS in 1979, in the group of Yves Bouligand at the Centre de Biologie Cellulaire in Ivry-sur-Seine. Later on, she joined the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Orsay in 1993, where she founded an interdisciplinary research group. She is also a microscopist and was President of the French Microscopy Society (SFmu) in 2012-13.

Her work is marked by the beauty of self-assembled systems and their geometries. Her interests include complex order of chiral frustrated systems, liquid crystallinity of biological matter, polymer and polyelectrolyte properties of DNA and chromatin.