Cell scientist to watch – Virgile Viasnoff

Virgile earned his first degree in soft matter physics at the École Normale Superieure in Paris. He then moved to Johns Hopkins University in the USA to complete a Masters degree, before returning to Paris to pursue his PhD at the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles (ESPCI) in Francois Lequeux's laboratory. In 2006, after two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Amit Meller at Harvard, Vigile started his own lab at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) at ESPCI. Between 2010 and 2011, Virgile spent two years on sabbatical at the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at the University of Singapore. He now holds a dual appointment between CNRS and MBI, and his lab in Singapore investigates how the physical and biochemical parameters of the cellular microenvironment regulate cell–cell adhesion and cell fate.