Profile

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Florence Lichou

My CV

  • Education:

    Primary and secondary schools in my home town in the west of France. My final years were focused on Science (Biology, Maths, Physics, Chemistry).

    3-year Bachelor (Licence in French) at the University of Tours. I was studying Biology encompassing the study of plants, animals, humans, microbes… and even rocks! (Geology)

    1st year of Master at the same University. I was studying Biology, focusing on human diseases.

    2nd year of Master at the University of Bordeaux. Still studying the human biology with a specialisation in genetics. I ended my Master with a 6-month internship working on the role of DNA mutations in cancer treatment resistance.

    3 and 1/2-year of Doctorate in the same lab as my Master internship to finish my research project.

  • Work History:

    During my undergraduate degree, I worked during Summer holidays (and some weekends) as a waitress. An underestimated job that I really enjoyed and allowed me to acquire many useful skills.

    I was also a private tutor for students from 10 to 18 years old. Teaching Maths, Biology, Physics and Chemistry. Since I was a kid I’ve always loved teaching and knew I would be a professor.

    During my Master and my Doctorate (4 years) I worked in the lab. I learnt how to manage a research project “from A to Z”.

  • Current Job:

    I was graduated in May 2019 and quickly joined Gosia Trynka’s group at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Our goal is to understand the effect of genetic alterations on the misbehaves of the immune system.

  • About Me:

    I am a 27 yo French scientist living and working for the first time abroad, in the UK. I am fascinated by life sciences and I am always keen to share about it with others.

  • Read more

    I am Florence. I moved from France to the UK in June 2019 and I now live in a lovely town near Cambridge. I like watching movies, series, playing video games, reading comics… Lucky for me, these are hobbies that are suitable to the lockdown! I also love to travel but for now I can only plan my next trip and make photo albums of my previous vacation.

  • Read more

    The Human body is made up of ~60,000 billion cells. These are small compartments containing the machinery necessary to operate the body. The element that manages these small factories is called DNA. It comprises all the instructions necessary to guide the cells.

    DNA is like a microscopic ball of yarn. If you took it out of the cells and unfolded it, it would measure 3 meters! So picture this, each one of us has 60,000 billion cells, each containing a string of 3-meter DNA. Placed end to end, it represents a 180,000 billion-meter string of DNA contained in the human body!

    So my work is to study this DNA, elucidate its mysteries to understand how the human body works. I’m particularly interested in understanding the effect of DNA alterations in disease occurrence (cancer, immune disease).

  • My Typical Day:

    My workday starts around 9-9:30am. My boss is pretty cool and I can manage my schedule as I want. Sometimes, I spend my entire day in front of my computer, replying emails, planning experiments and analysing my results. Other days, I like to spend hours in the lab, taking care of “my cells” (they eat a lot!) or manipulating DNA.

  • Read more

    Most of the time I’m working in a specific room dedicated to cell culture.

    Here we maintain human cells in dishes and perform different experiments on it to study cell biology.

    Almost every day, I’m looking at the cells under a specific microscope to make sure they are “happy” and ready for my experiments.

    Regularly we attend to conferences where we have the opportunity to present our work either with posters or oral presentations. It is always very exciting as we discuss with a lot of scientists working in different fields of biology.

  • My Interview

    • How would you describe yourself in 3 words?

      joyful, spontaneous, fussy

      What did you want to be after you left school?

      For a short period of time, I wanted to be a medical doctor but my fear of blood rapidly made me change my mind! Then I quickly knew that I wanted to become a teacher and researcher.

      Were you ever in trouble at school?

      Not that I remembered!

      Who is your favourite singer or band?

      Linkin Park

      What's your favourite food?

      Difficult... Beef Wellington and "pain au chocolat" maybe

      If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!

      Go around the world, be taller (just a few inches) and have a big family

      Tell us a joke.

      Found on Google: What ever happened to Gene? Oh, he moved to LA and hired a promoter and now he's a big operator. Just last week he put an operon (opera on) in the Hollywood Bowl.

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