2  Assessment of the unit

The LPTMS has been producing fantastic science over the last five years. It has acquired a worldwide reputation, as attested by several prestigious awards. The number of outstanding contributions is impressive, with not only various breakthroughs at the fundamental level, but also a broad range of multidisciplinary applications. The creativity of its members is of course the main ingredient in this success. The remarkable collective dynamics inside the unit played also a crucial role. In particular the mixing of abilities led to the derivation of unexpected equivalences with quite spectacular outcomes. The quality of the hired young researchers is an essential asset for maintaining the high-level scientific standards of the unit. They strongly contribute to the lively and pleasant atmosphere in the laboratory, and thanks to their open mind, new transversal interactions between the various teams were developed. The LPTMS paid a constant and efficient attention to the training of students. Various members are involved in the direction of international schools or programs. Professors and assistant professors, despite their heavy teaching and administrative duties, are at the front of their research fields. The LPTMS is very active in preparing its transfer to the Saclay plateau. It is the driving force in the emergence of the new Institute for Advanced Physics, a rather attractive project which matches multidisciplinary interactions. The unit is a remarkable factory of ideas, with a powerful internal dynamics, and both the CNRS and the University Paris-Sud are strongly encouraged to support it, and moreover to be cautious with threatening issues briefly sketched below and detailed further later in the report.

Strengths and opportunities related to the context

-Activities with potential multidisciplinary applications which should favor fruitful interactions and collaborations with other laboratories on the Saclay plateau; -Visibility and well-established reputation should attract high-level researchers and teams both at the LPTMS and at the future Institute for Advanced Physics; -Quality of teaching and research, should help to attract more students from the surrounding Grandes Écoles.

Weaknesses and threats related to the context -Actual absence of public transportation ensuring easy connections to the Saclay plateau might discourage LPTMS members and make them succumb to the attraction of other highly reputed institutions, in particular in central Paris;

-Dilution of theoretical physics into large complex structures involving entities with large resources needs; -Absence of firm engagement from authorities for the support of the activities of the Institut de Physique Avancée (IPA) on a permanent basis.

Recommendations

The committee recommends the LPTMS to make more publicity for his unique expertise in various fields. This will help the unit to enhance collaborations and interactions with other laboratories on the Saclay plateau, which beyond their obvious scientific interest, should strengthen its position at a strategic level. CNRS and University are invited to ensure sufficient human resources to LPTMS. The committee considers the LPTMS to be an outstandingly good lab by any international standards. A strong support of this remarkable lab, a jewel in the crown, in the following funding period is highly recommended.

 Detailed assessments Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The laboratory has produced an amazing number of outstanding contributions, as attested by the quite high number of publications in prestigious journals such as Physical Review Letters (around 80) and Nature. New results obtained during the examined period represent both breakthroughs at the fundamental level and a wide range of promising applications in many disciplines including biology, medicine, computer science, ecology, economy, finance. This is a quite remarkable feature for a theoretical physics laboratory, illustrating the creativity and open-mindedness of its researchers. Ideas and methods specific to random matrices and disordered systems have been fruitfully mixed, while various groups have developed tight collaborations with experimental teams expert in cold atoms and the biological properties of cells.

The impressive scientific production of the unit can be illustrated through a few highlights: the prediction of Hawking-like radiation in Bose gases opens the possibility of laboratory experiments with important outcomes. The existence of unconventional phase transitions has also been shown, such as the topological superfluid phase of polar molecules, or the one-dimensional fluid-insulator transition resulting from the competition between disorder and interactions. The derivation of new exact solutions for Brownian motion in two dimensions is as remarkable as unexpected, with various applications in disease spreading or nuclear radiation damage for instance. A fascinating equivalence has been established between extreme value statistics of the eigenvalues of random matrices and the vicious walker problem. In the domain of compressed sensing, the combination of replica and cavity tricks provided a new reconstruction method which can be used for improving data storage or image processing. The progress achieved in understanding the counter-ion induced attraction between equally charged macro-molecules, is essential for further modeling of the static and dynamical properties of colloids. Finally at the physics-biology interface, the importance of the fission mechanism in the behavior of the cells has been demonstrated.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The laboratory is well recognized at the international level. The quality of the hired resources is indisputable, with one ERC grants, at the senior level. Moreover, various members received prestigious awards such as the Langevin prize, the Gay-Lussac-Humboldt prize, the Tata Excellence Award, the Heisenberg fellowship, or the CNRS bronze medal, while others were offered high-level professor positions in foreign countries. The fact that members of the laboratory sit on the editorial board of prestigious journals, or organize international conferences and schools (in the Institute Henri Poincaré or Les Houches) are further indicators of the reputation of the unit worldwide.

At the national level, most of his members obtained scientific excellence rewards from both the CNRS and the University, and several ANR grants are running. One member was recently nominated Director of the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, a second was nominated director of research for the IDEX Paris-Saclay after having been deputy director of Theoretical Physics at the CNRS. All these top positions in the French scientific administration confirm the prestige of the unit. A professor has been recruited as a "directeur de recherche" in INRA, a rather uncommon transfer which also sheds light on the special position of the unit. Finally, various bright researchers, including postdocs, came to the laboratory, not only from France but also from abroad.

No doubt, the laboratory has a good reputation, both at the international and national levels. However, its visibility could, and should, be enhanced, in line with its high scientific level, which is equivalent to that of the best well-known laboratories all over the world.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

The unit is well integrated into the Paris-Sud campus, in particular through various collaborations involving other laboratories. Nevertheless, and in relation with the above remark about its visibility, the laboratory is encouraged to improve the dissemination of its results, through vulgarization journals or even newspapers. This would favor the emergence of interactions and projects, not only with other academic entities but also with some companies, in accordance with the broad range of potential applications of the fundamental results obtained. Furthermore, the abilities and expertise present in the unit, deserve to be employed in popular large-audience events such as the Fête de la Science for example. Attracting young generations to Science is clearly a major social challenge, for which the LPTMS has many assets.

Assessment of the unit's organization and life

The laboratory is divided into three teams according to rather general topics. However, and fortunately, there are no barriers between the teams, so the LPTMS can be considered as the laboratory of open doors! There exist many interactions and collaborations between researchers belonging to different teams, in relation with the strong overlaps between their fields of interest. Some people work on parallel things, join and then split again. Even members who might feel isolated enjoy the ambiance and benefit from fruitful discussions with their colleagues. The young people, PhD students and post-docs, contribute to this lively and pleasant atmosphere, in particular through the organization of a journal club, an informal seminar, where each two weeks, one of them presents the content of a published paper. Furthermore, all questions concerning the unit's scientific policy or material aspects, such as the transfer to the Saclay plateau, are widely discussed, and important decisions are taken only after a general consensus is reached.

In recent years, the unit has undergone a phase transition in its collective dynamics. It has surely become a reference, benefiting largely from the French style of laboratory organization. It is crucial to preserve this remarkable scientific synergy from various centrifugal forces. One of them clearly arises from the transfer to a new building on the plateau, which might discourage people who are submitted, at the same time, to the attraction of central Paris. Another threat of explosion comes from the broad range of interdisciplinary applications which might tempt the regulators to affect some researchers to other units. It is of paramount importance to keep a sufficiently large number of theoreticians working in the same unit, in order to ensure fruitful exchanges leading to the emergence of new concepts and tools. Accordingly, the creation of the Institut de Physique Avancée (IPA), in the same new building as the LPTMS, is a crucial element in this equation. Sufficient funding for its activities is of course a further key element.

Administrative staff is quite efficient and excellent, well integrated into the collective dynamics of the unit. Two secretaries, one working 60 % of her time, ensure the management of the scientific missions and of the various resources, as well as all the daily tasks with dedication and cheerfulness. One engineer is in charge of the computer network, a rather useful facility for researchers. In addition to its crucial role in the good functioning of the unit, the administrative staff clearly contributes to its friendly atmosphere.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

The unit is pretty involved in teaching purposes, in particular in the organization of the École Doctorale common to the École Normale Supérieure and Universities Paris 6, 7 and 11. It also manages an international master program on complex systems, as well as a one-month college in advanced physics in Trieste each spring. Various members of the LPTMS give key courses in several national master programs and in a few high-level schools for engineers, like the ESPCI or the École Centrale. The teachers of the laboratory also intervene in basic university courses, and play a central role in the preparation of university students for entrance exams to national Grandes Écoles. They are well-known for their pedagogical skills. The attention paid by the unit to teaching is confirmed by the publication of two monographs, one in quantum mechanics, well appreciated by students, and another one in the applications of statistical mechanics to information theory and computing, which has rapidly become a reference for researchers in this new emerging field.

Within the unit, various original initiatives enforce the skills and knowledge of young people, both PhD students and post-docs. In addition to the Journal Club mentioned above, each year one senior researcher gives a lecture on a new topic at the forefront of modern physics. The daily discussions favored by the friendly scientific ambiance also contribute to the excellent training of young members. Furthermore, the unit provides sufficient support for young people to attend schools and conferences. Thus, PhD students and post-docs are well prepared, as attested by the high percentage, around 80 %, of PhD students and post-docs, who ultimately obtain a permanent position in the academic system. These useful and reliable statistics are obtained by keeping track of Ph.D. students after leaving the unit.

The number of PhD students is relatively low, in obvious strong correlation with the small number of PhD grants available at the École Doctorale. Other sources of grants, in particular those from ANR grants, should be encouraged. The University is encouraged to allow Ph.D; students financed by sources other than the École Doctorale to teach (monitorat), and it should also propose more French courses for foreigners. Of course, if their number increases, PhD students should attend lecture courses proposed by the École Doctorale and attend the seminars designed to promote future careers outside the academic world.

Finally, it must be pointed out, that the teachers appointed by the university, in particular the assistant professors, have produced remarkable results, despite their heavy teaching and administrative duties, which moreover were accomplished to the highest standards. The pressure on university staff was previously reduced through exchange of teaching duties with CNRS members. Unfortunately this arrangement has been stopped and the committee recommends to re-establish possibility of teaching exchanges between university and CNRS staff. Recruitment of assistant professors is also an urgent issue, given the imbalanced between university and CNRS members, namely around 1 per 4 presently.

Assessment of the strategy and the five-year plan

There is a large number of promising and interesting projects planned for the next years. In part they are natural continuations of previous works, while some projects are more innovative, and even risky including strong thematic changes, like that from condensed matter towards econophysics. This leads to some dispersion, which is partly related to the creativity of the unit spread among many researchers, a very positive aspect of the unit! As proved by the impressive scientific production of those last five years, such diversity does not alter either fruitful interactions or the emergence of new ideas which arise through spontaneous collaborations.

The committee believes that the unit will maintain its high scientific standards, in particular thanks to the extremely high quality of young researchers. Nevertheless, a more global thinking about a few big common projects would certainly help the LPTMS to better exploit its fantastic abilities, by identifying potential interactions either inside the unit or with other laboratories. Furthermore, the committee feels that, in general, the remarkable advances made by the LPTMS are undersold. This relative weakness in communication might also be corrected through a more structured plan, which highlights the strengths of the unit and sets up some banner or flagship in relation with its specific expertise. Such a communication policy would be particularly worthwhile for the LPTMS, considering all the projects which display a wide range of applications, for example from biology to medicine or ecology.

In the next five years, the LPTMS will have to face its transfer to the Saclay plateau. There is a reasonable consensus about this vast operation, despite some members worries that important decisions were taken too quickly. Today, the position of the unit is rather pragmatic, trying to make the most of the opportunities associated with the large-scale project surrounding the new location on the Saclay plateau. The new building should offer more space which is urgently needed. The insertion of the LPTMS into the new structures, in particular the LABEX PALM, is important for strategy purposes, ensuring a priori some resources and protection. The unit is also very active in the emergence of the new Institute for Advanced Physics, a rather attractive concept which matches multidisciplinary projects. The natural connections that the unit has with the LPS and the FAST on the plateau should be enhanced and the committee encourages the unit to develop interactions with other disciplines, such as mathematics for instance, and to strengthen the collaborations with experimentalists in other laboratories on the campus and in engineer schools.

In conclusion, the committee invites the CNRS and the University to strongly support the LPTMS, especially with respect to its new localization on the Saclay plateau. Reducing the education duties of assistant professors and professors should be considered as well as reinforcing the number of University teachers with respect to CNRS researchers. The university should pay a special attention to the access to scientific journals and reviews, which has recently undergone some perturbations and breakdown. More generally, the committee recommends the CNRS and the university to provide all the resources needed by the LPTMS in order to maintain, and even increase, its remarkable output.

4  Team-by-team analysis Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions 7  Detailed assessments for Team 1

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The group consists of 10 permanent researchers, including an emeritus, 3 U-PSUD and 6 CNRS. The research interests of the group pertain to several domains of the physics of quantum gases, strongly correlated systems, fractional quantum Hall effect, low dimensional devices or Kondo phenomenon. Through the evaluation period the group produced 125 scientific publications in leading international refereed journals, including several Physical Review Letters (29) and 3 Nature Physics. This high level of scientific activity is all the more remarkable given the fact that some members have heavy administrative responsibilities (one member was deputy director for physics at the CNRS, while a second was the head of the predoctoral program of Les Houches) and other members have heavy teaching duties being "enseignants-chercheurs".

The most original results concern (i) the study of Hawking radiation in Bose gases which opens the possibility to experimentally observe the Hawking radiation in a laboratory; (ii) the prediction of the topological p x +ip y superfluid phase for microwave-dressed polar molecules in 2D; (iii)the breakthrough of a finite temperature phase-transition between two distinct states, fluid and insulator, in one-dimensional disordered bosons where it is known that conventional finite-temperature phase-transitions cannot occur since thermal fluctuations destroy long-range correlations; (iv) the study of the role of integrability and finite size effects on sudden quenches of interactions and on thermalization of cold atomic bosons; (v) the emergence of the Pfaffian wave function as a robust option for the 5/2-fractional quantum hall state in the second Landau level.

Moreover the prediction of novel Feshbach resonances induced by microwave fields could be of great impact in the evolution of ultracold-gas experiments and the study of the role of the interactions in some atomic species. This possibility has been excluded by theory until now.

Generally speaking these studies have all been developed, keeping in sight the objective of their experimental realizability, and quite often in close connection with outstanding experimental groups in France and abroad.

Assessment of the team's academic reputation and appeal

The team has long a standing reputation for providing leaders both in the fields of condensed matter and quantum fluids. During the report period the group has been reinforced at the junior level by the recruitment of two very brilliant and active researchers (a CNRS junior researcher and an assistant professor) who have strengthened the connection of the team with the other members of the laboratory. Several outstanding postdoctoral fellows have contributed to the dynamics of the group and its evolution.

The reputation of the group is attested to by a number of academic distinctions, including one advanced ERC grants, a senior BEC award, one Triangle de la Physique external junior chair together with a Triangle senior chair, and an outstanding APS referee award. The scientific standing of the group members and their original research ideas has led to the award of 6 ANR grants over the reporting period, plus numerous other sources of funding, including an ECOS-SUD grant. Both the senior and the junior members of the team are regularly invited as speakers at international conferences. The senior members have participated as editors of leading physics journals and also have been organizers of a number of prestigious international conferences.

Assessment of the team's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment See general assessment on the unit.

Assessment of the team's organization and life

See general assessment on the unit.

Assessment of the team's involvement in training through research

The team includes three outstanding assistant professors who provide a connection between the LPTMS and students of the Paris-Sud University and other institutions in the Paris area. They are providing key courses in quantum mechanics, statistical physics and condensed matter, are involved in several masters programs, including "Concepts fondamentaux de la physique" and motivate the Paris-Sud Licence programme which includes preparation for students trying to integrate "Les Grandes Écoles", giving university students an important help within the French education system. It is regrettable that the CNRS members are not more involved in teaching at University Paris-Sud. At present an administrative rule excludes this possibility, preventing the sharing of teaching responsibilities. CNRS members are however involved in teaching and research training both at local level, by organizing the "LPTMS"courses for the students and postdoctoral fellows of the laboratory, and at international level with the organization of several Les Houches and Institut Henri Poincaré international sessions. During the report period the group has directed the PhD of 7 students and 3 are still in progress. These students benefit from an active scientific environment based around a successful biweekly "journal club".

Assessment of the strategy and the five-year plan

The scientific objectives for the next 5 years follow the lines of the main research topics of this group in the last past years. This ensures consistency and the achievement of targets.

Several original ideas emerge from the project: (i) exploiting the particular density of states of an interacting Bose gas in quasi-periodic potentials to create localized states at "high" temperature; (ii) study the manifestation of the sonic Hawking radiation in the measurement of momentum correlations in a 1D Bose condensed gas; (iii) exploiting novel Feshbach resonances in low dimensional systems to study the "death of multi-particle entanglements"; (iv) manipulating the symmetry of Fermi superfluid pairing in 2D with the aim of achieving d-wave symmetry and developing models that simulate the behaviour of high-temperature superconductors; (v) understanding the topological properties on non-abelian quasi-particles in the 5/2-fractional quantum Hall state. Although one might have looked for more new and original projects, the ensemble of subjects presented here is interesting and exciting and there is no doubt that the team will developed them successfully. However it is also worth pointing out that one member of the team has proposed a radical switch of research activity from strongly correlated electrons to complexity and game theory, motivated by economics and computer science. This is exciting and courageous and preliminary indications suggest it will be successful.

Conclusion

 Strengths and opportunities:

Excellent expertise in condensed matter and quantum gases; collaborations with top experimental groups in the field of cold atoms.

 Weaknesses and threats:

Heavy teaching and administrative charges on various members.

 Recommendations:

Enhance collaborations inside the group. The team has achieved very surprising and far-reaching exact results on the convex hull of collections of Brownian motion and branching Brownian motion in 2D, with potential applications to ecology (animal disease spreading) and nuclear radiation damage and other fields. The team has also achieved outstanding results on extreme value statistics of eigenvalues of random matrices including the unexpected equivalence to the vicious walker problem. Among many other results obtained by the team using random matrix theory we highlight a new description of quantum entanglement, results on the distribution of the index of random Gaussian and Wishart matrices, and results on the ratio of nearest level spacings, a new statistics adapted to high-dimensional (many-body) systems. The team had further achieved interesting results on typical secondary structures of RNA molecules, and in conformal field with applications to the fractional quantum Hall effect or conformally invariant random processes.

Assessment of the team's academic reputation and appeal

Various awards were attributed to several team members, like the Prix Langevin de l'Académie des Sciences ( 2008), the Tata Excellence Award ( 2009), and the CNRS Bronze medal (2010). A member is Divisional Associated Editor of Physical Review Letters (since January 2009). He is also Adjunct Professor at Tata Institute, Bombay, India (since 2005), at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel (since 2011), and at ICTS, Bangalore, India (since 2011), and has given several invited lectures. He was a plenary speaker at STATPHYS25 (Seoul, South Korea, July, 2013). During the evaluation period the team has hired two CNRS CR, and welcome two CR (mutations). All of these three have excellent publication records and have demonstrated independence, for instance by producing a large number of papers without co-authorship of other team or lab members. Most of the postdocs and PhD students in the team are recent hires and have not yet produced a significant number of papers. The committee was however able to verify that the atmosphere in the team was very positive and encouraging to young researchers.

Assessment of the team's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

See general assessment on the unit.

Assessment of the team's organization and life

See general assessment on the unit.

Assessment of the team's involvement in training through research

The team is comprised almost exclusively of CNRS researchers, the only enseignant-chercheur soon to retire. Other team members are nevertheless involved in undergraduate teaching at École Centrale and at École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris. The team leader has given invited lectures at two leading summer schools (Les Houches 2008, Leiden 2009). Two of the junior team members have given the yearly internal advanced lecture course at LPTMS (in 2011 and 2012, respectively).

Assessment of the strategy and the five-year plan

With the passing away of one emeritus member and two impending retirements, the team will comprise of 3 Senior Scientists (DR) and 4 Associate Scientists (CR), and will be markedly young. The proposed plan for the next five years comprises eight projects, many of them with the common themes of using/extending random matrix theory and of exploiting the breakthroughs achieved by the team in the preceding period.

The committee noted the proposed extension of the work on convex hulls of stochastic processes from two to three dimensions, and the extension extreme statistics from maximal/minimal events to near maximal/minimal events, or to the distribution of the k'th largest/smallest events. The team pioneered these directions and is likely the best placed to pursue them, world-wide. The commission also noted the stated ambitious long-term goal "to build a comprehensive theory and classification of […] statistics for strongly correlated variables".

The committee further noted connections to be made between random matrix theory and principle component analysis (PCA) which ties in with recent developments in the statistics literature (e.g. Noureddine El Karaoui, "Spectrum estimation for large dimensional covariance matrices using random matrix theory", Ann of Statistics, Volume 36, Number 6 (2008), 2757-2790). The committee suggests that perhaps such potential connections to mathematics / statistics could be exploited more in the following contract period.

On the renewal side the committee notes the proposed application of random matrix theory to the Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) problem in information theory. Research in this direction is already pursued in many places, and the team, with their depth and breadth of expertise in random matrix theory may here achieve significant impact. The committee believes that the impact may be enhanced if the team strives to publish results to be obtained in this direction in high-profile journals in information theory, and also that there could be potential synergies with engineering schools in the future Paris-Saclay center such as e.g. Supelec.

The committee further notes the proposed new direction on the intersection between physics and finance / economy / game theory. The proposed work from the team is interesting and innovative. The commission particularly notes the combination of (backwards) Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation for a stochastic optimization and (forwards) Fokker-Planck for the development of the state which has many applications to mathematics and physics well outside this indicated application area. The proposed work on the game of Go is interdisciplinary and somewhat speculative, but could well interest and attract undergraduate / post-graduate students, and therefore serve a secondary purpose to broaden the team's and the lab's recruitment and teaching base.

Conclusion

 Strengths and opportunities:

Unique expertise in random matrix theory with a large variety of applications.

 Weaknesses and threats:

Absence of assistant-professors and professors.

 Recommendations:

Enhance contacts and collaborations with researchers in mathematics or in engineer schools on the Saclay plateau. Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions 6 5  Detailed assessments for Team 3

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

Team 3 consists of overall 7 staff members, 7 PhD students and 2 post-docs. One senior staff member is on "détachement", and another one holds currently an ENS director position. One junior staff member has been appointed in 2011. During the evaluation period, the team was scientifically highly productive, with overall 188 peerreviewed publications in high-level journals also outside physics, including 5 in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), 22 in Physical Review Letters, 1 in Cell, and 1 in Nature Communications. Of all three teams, the research directions of team 3 are the most diverse ones. They range from the statistical physics of disordered systems (spin-and structural glasses, avalanche dynamics) to cavity methods with applications (superconductorinsulator transition, compressed sensing), soft matter systems (strongly charged colloids), granular gases (non-elastic Boltzmann and fluctuating hydrodynamics equation methods), Casimir interactions of arbitrarily shaped bodies, biomechanical studies (e.g., cytoskeleton contraction) and system biology activities (biological networks). Most of these research activities are of a distinctly interdisciplinary character, with strong links to computer science and information theory, electrochemistry and colloid science, microbiology, and medicine.

Among the many high-profile and far-reaching results of team 3, the Compressed Sensing activities have made the strongest impact so far. The new "seeded Belief Propagation" reconstruction method developed in collaboration with members of the team allows for reaching the theoretical compression limit. It is based on insights from crystal nucleation theory, and replica and cavity methods for disordered glassy systems. The method can be used for improved data storage and extraction, the speeding up of magnetic resonance and X-ray imaging (dose reduction), and for imaging applications in astronomy. Various applications and extensions are under development.

The committee further highlights important advances achieved using cavity methods that account for fluctuations in a local environment within an overall mean-field environment. This is essential for extracting a meaningful phase diagram for glassy, disordered or frustrated systems. Collaborations involving LPTMS members have applied this technique with success to quantum systems. Pertinent results include the mapping of quantum path integrals of glassy or frustrated systems onto a classical dynamical system, and the projection of the cavity Hilbert space onto approximate spaces in the study of disordered superconductors. The model superconducting phase becomes stable to a finite level of disorder only through the inclusion of cavity fluctuations. These are important developments in this difficult field.

The work on the strong coupling expansion for strongly charged colloids, and here in particular the precise calculation of ground-state micro-ion distributions and associated phase diagram, has very significantly advanced the understanding of the effective interaction of strongly repelling charged colloids. It has led to the first clear physical picture of counterion-induced like-charge attraction between closely spaced and equally charged bodies. This interdisciplinary work should prove very useful in future theoretical modeling of the stability, phase behavior and dynamics of charge-stabilized colloids and protein solutions.

A member of the team has developed a universal and exact approach for computing the Casimir forces between objects of arbitrary shape and material composition described on the continuum level. A general scattering series approach, with the object properties encoded in individual scattering matrices, has been developed for this purpose. Explicit results have been obtained in particular for objects with sharp edges and tips. An extension of the scattering series method to heat transfer problems has also been made. This is a truly interdisciplinary project with a plethora of possible applications in various fields.

The committee notices also the excellent works at the physics-biology interface, namely on the relation between protein folding and function, the stress built-up and buckling of contracting actomyosin bundles, and on the modeling of intra-cellular networks. We highlight particularly the joint theoretical-experimental validation of the fission mechanism, published in a paper in the top-ranked journal Cell with a member of the team as co-author.

Assessment of the team's academic reputation and appeal

The excellence of the staff members of team 3 is visible also through prestigious awards and promotions to high profile positions. A former LPTMS director has received the Gay-Lussac-Humboldt prize, and has been appointed as the director of the ENS in Paris. A university professor in the lab has become research director at INRA, but will continue to work part time at the LPTMS. This person is directing now a plant genetic unit, and acts as deputy director of IMSV (Institut de Modélisation des Systèmes Vivants). Another member of the lab received a German Heisenberg fellowship. A Paris-Sud senior chair of excellence was awarded to one of the remaining university professors of team 3. One very promising young staff scientist has joined the lab in 2011. Both researchers have excellent independent publication records, and they have added significantly to the attractiveness and visibility of the research at the LPTMS by opening, in particular, new activities at the bio-physics interface, and by establishing new collaborations with groups outside the LPTMS.

Assessment of the team's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment See general assessment on the unit.

Assessment of the team's organization and life

See general assessment on the unit.

Assessment of the team's involvement in training through research

Team 3 has the largest number of PhD students and post-docs. While most are recently hired, some of the young scientists have already produced a number of papers. The committee noticed the very friendly and productive atmosphere inside the team, percolating throughout the lab. Members of team 3 have been involved in various teaching activities. One professor organized the Spring College of Advanced Physics in Trieste and is directing, together with a second professor, the international master program "Physics of Complex Systems". Another professor is co-directing the graduate program "Physique et Systèmes Biologique", and he has organized a conference on Physics and Biology. Further points to note include the organization of a seminar series at the physics-biology interface, in cooperation with the LPS and ISMO institutes, and the publication of a monography "Information, Physics and Computation" (2011) which has already become a standard textbook in the field.

Assessment of the strategy and the five-year plan

The proposed plan for the next five years comprises five projects, which are partially building on the impressive pool of results obtained by the team in the preceding period. The project on a quantitative field theory of dynamical glass transition aims at going beyond mean-field like theories using mode-coupling methods. The project builds on an impressive series of papers on replica field theory and mode-coupling theory approaches to the glass dynamics published over the past three years with leading participation by team 3. Even so, there remains a great challenge that requires all the expertise of the LPTMS members.

The committee further notices the planned extensive studies of avalanches in diverse systems with a view to making universality class classifications. This project is very interesting. For an enlarged visibility outside the lab, it would be gratifying to develop applications to the dynamics of stress-loaded amorphous solids.

The interface project between statistical physics and information theory (computer science) includes two research directions. In the first one, the compressed sensing reconstruction method developed in the last period will be extended and applied to various problems related to dictionary learning, tomography, non-linear measurements, and information processing by the brain. The involved team members very reasonably exploit here the groundbreaking results gained in the preceding period. The second direction goes under the label optimization on networks and aims at developing self-managed algorithms with applications to communication scheduling and routing, resource allocation, and other network features. The team has strong competence in the proposed statistical physics based methods. The commission suggests to strengthen further the visibility and potential impact of this work through collaborations with communication networks and information theory groups.

In the soft condensed matter project, future applications of the strong coupling approach are outlined. Most notable are the planned investigations of the dynamics of micro-ion condensates in external electric fields. With their deep knowledge of effective interactions and correlations of charged particle systems, the team is excellently prepared for this ambitious task which is highly relevant for the understanding of electro-kinetic effects in charged soft matter and biomolecular systems such as DNA and proteins. We believe that the expected high impact could be even further enhanced by analyzing, in addition, the electrophoretic motion of strongly charged interacting colloids.

Future work in the project about Casimir forces will include new situations, for instance objects kept at different temperatures or moving bodies. The planned work is of great generality, with the prospective of a vast application range both to quantum-mechanical and classical systems. It partially builds on a general scattering series expansion method developed by a team member during the last period.

Two research lines are outlined in the physics-biology interfaces project. In the first line, well-established biological network activities will be extended to the modeling of the regulation of cell differentiation in plants. This research line will be guided by interactions with plant biologists. The second line deals with the geometrical organization of filaments (cytoskeleton contractility). This new development appears very promising, with the prospect of potentially learning more about diseases such as Alzheimer. It takes advantage of established collaborations with experimentalists.

Conclusion

 Strengths and opportunities:

Excellent and complementary abilities in disordered systems and statistical physics with a wide range of applications including other disciplines like computer science and biology.

 Weaknesses and threats:

Heavy administrative duties for various seniors.

 Recommendations:

Make more advertisements in order to develop fruitful collaborations with other groups in information theory or charged soft matter.

  Team name Condensed Matter and Quantum Fluids Name of team leader: Mr Georgy SHLYAPNIKOV Workforce Permanent EPST or EPIC researchers and similar positions 6 6 N3: Other permanent staff (without research duties) N4: Other professors (PREM, ECC, etc.) N5: Other EPST or EPIC researchers (DREM, Postdoctoral students, visitors, etc.spent at least 12 months in the unit 6 Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken 1

N3:N5:

  Permanent professors and similar positions 1 N2: Permanent EPST or EPIC researchers and similar positions 8 8 Other permanent staff (without research duties) N4: Other professors (PREM, ECC, etc.) 1 Other EPST or EPIC researchers (DREM, Postdoctoral students, visitors, spent at least 12 months in the unit Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions  Detailed assessments for Team 2 Assessment of scientific quality and outputs Team 2 "Statistical physics, dynamical systems" comprises 9 permanent staff, 4 PhD students and 2 post-docs. The team has published 142 papers during the evaluation period, including 21 in Physical Review Letters, 10 in Journal of Statistical Physics, 8 in Nuclear Physics B, two in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and one in Reviews of Modern Physics. Junior team members stand behind 41 of the 63 papers produced by staff appointed since January 1, 2008 (without co-authorship of other lab members) and team members are implicated in 15 out of 15 common scientific papers (across-teams) produced in the laboratory.

N3:

  Team name Disordered systems, soft matter and physics-biology interface Name of team leader: Mr Silvio FRANZ Workforce Permanent EPST or EPIC researchers and similar positions 4 4 Other permanent staff (without research duties) N4: Other professors (PREM, ECC, etc.) N5: Other EPST or EPIC researchers (DREM, Postdoctoral students, visitors,

 Supervising bodies' general comments


Pierre Glaudes

 Introduction History and geographical location of the unit

The UMR 8126 was created in 2010 on the basis of the unit 'Molecular interactions and Cancer' (UMR 8126 2006(UMR 8126 -2009)). The new structure consisted of the staff present in the initial structure and of Ms Svetlana DOKUDOVSKAYA who joined the unit in 2010. The unit was reorganized into 3 teams, the first of which comprises four groups, to foster more scientific interactions between the investigators. The unit UMR 8126 currently comprises 13 researchers, 9 technicians or engineers (ITA), 5 post-doctoral fellows and 14 PhD students. Among the 14 staff scientists, 6 are "directeurs de recherche" (five employed by CNRS, one by Inserm), 3 are "chargés de recherche" (all at CNRS), one is "Maître de Conférence-Praticien Hospitalier" (MCU-PH) and 3 are "Emeritus". A young scientist has just been recruited by INSERM as "chargée de recherche". Among the 9 technicians and engineers, 6 were already working in the unit in 2008, a further 3 have been recruited by CNRS during the current contract.

The applicants now wish to simplify this structure of the unit in the next funding period by creating the following 6 autonomous teams:

-team 1 "Intracellular traffic, macromolecular complexes and cancer" (Ms Svetlana DOKUDOVSKAYA); -team 2 "Proteomics and Epigenetics" (Mr Vasily OGRYZKO); -team 3 "Nuclear organization and pathological models" (Mr Yegor VASSETZKY and Mr Marc LIPINSKI); -team 4 "Oncogenesis and resistance to apoptosis in B cell lymphomas" (Ms Joëlle WIELS); -team 5 "Genome maintenance and molecular microscopies" (Mr Éric LE CAM); -team 6 "Tumor microenvironnement, exosomes and microRNAs in solid tumors" (Mr Pierre BUSSON).

The unit is hosted in the first and third floor of the Institut Gusatve Roussy (IGR) in Villejuif. The available space appears to be commensurate to the size of the unit.

Management team

The current director is Ms Joëlle WIELS, who wishes to be prolonged in her functions in case of renewal. Mr Marc LIPINSKI is acting as deputy director and also wishes to retain these functions in the future. Ms Joëlle WIELS and Mr Marc LIPINSKI respectively served as deputy director and director in the UMR 8126 between 2006 and 2009. This ensures continuity in the team management and stability within the research unit. A general assembly, to which all members of scientific, technical and administrative staff are invited, takes place every 3 months basis and addresses the general organization and micromanagement of the laboratory, as well as the needs for new pieces of equipment. Technical and administrative members of staff prepare these meetings during working hours before the general assembly. Team and group leaders meet once a month to discuss the scientific strategy. Resources from IGR and CNRS are shared among the groups. The management team has also introduced mechanisms of financial solidarity between the scientists to weather short-term difficulties, although the details of the procedure were not revealed during the evaluation. The unit has nominated two technicians and engineers as health and safety officers. 2) The philosophy of the management team is to create the working conditions that facilitate 'creation of knowledge', in reference to the mission of the CNRS. This includes the establishment of democratic structures, solidarity and collaboration between the groups driven by technical expertise on proteomics and microscopy, as well as common scientific interests.

3) The unit has demonstrated its ability to attract a good level of external funding, particularly in form of PhD stipends.

4) The experts committee has been impressed by the huge effort put in the teaching of graduate students.

5) The unit has developed extensive international collaborations, particularly with Russia, which represents a source of scientists and of technical expertise, and is expected to allow access to high throughput devices.

6) The unit has the ability to attract young researchers and to offer career perspectives as attested by the recent recruitment of Ms Svetlana DOKUDOVSKAYA as a independent group leader and of a young scientist as "chargée de recherche". 7) Members of the unit have access to high-quality core facilities on the IGR site.

8) The research unit benefits from the proximity of the IGR hospital and has been able to recruit clinicians who are or were members of the unit during the last five years.

Weaknesses and threats related to the context

1. There is some heterogeneity in the structure of the groups, with a relative scarcity of young researchers and post-doctoral scientists. This situation needs to be addressed as quickly as possible to aid continuity of the present structure in 5 years.

2. Although the experts committee appreciates that the research projects of the PIs are generally complex, the modest number of publications with a very high impact factor remains a limitation for the long-term development of the unit.

3. The relative lack of resources and expertise in Bioinformatics on site is a constraint on the full development of the proteomics platform and of other high-throughput technologies.

Recommendations

1. In the context of the generation change with both director and deputy director intending to retire after the next funding period, the experts committee feels that it is urgent to prepare for the future. In this context, the representative of the CNRS and the director of the Institut de Recherche Intégrée en Cancerologie of the Institut Gustave Roussy (IRCIV/IGR) informed the committee that three priorities have been defined (genetics and epigenetics, immune response and DNA repair) for the center. The research projects developed by the members of the UMR 8126 fit well within this strategy and can make important contributions to it.

2. It is important to increase the level of funding to maintain the equipment and in particular the microscopes to the highest levels of quality. Attempts to obtain funding from the european union should be made and help with the applications should be sought from the CNRS.

3. Ideally, the unit should try to recruit (a) bioinformatician(s) for large-scale data analysis. This could be combined to efforts at the IGR level to improve services in this crucial research area. 4. Priorities for certain topics in which the unit can achieve excellence and publications in journals with very high impact should be defined. This does not mean that only one topic should be selected but rather to focus efforts and make the best out the creativity and technical expertise available. Combining the expertise in biochemistry and in imaging technologies, eg in DNA repair, might represent a fruitful approach. In this context the unit may consider recruiting people with a strong interest in this area.

5. The proximity of the IGR hospital is an important asset for the unit and the clinical interactions with the IGR hospital should be maintained and if possible expanded. There is a need to foster exchanges between young clinicians and young researchers in form of formal and informal exchanges though e.g. student initiatives.

 Detailed assessments

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The scientists in the UMR 8126 tackle important questions about fundamental nuclear functions (DNA replication and repair, chromatin organization), many of which are directly or indirectly relevant to human diseases e.g. malignant lymphomas, micro/nano objects secreted by tumor cells and several models of virally-induced oncogenesis. The unit is also strongly involved in translational research with projects on inhibitors of anti-apoptotic proteins, histone deacetylase and galectin 9 and identification of biomarkers. Despite the apparent diversity in research themes, interactions between the groups are genuine. Some topics such as the study of chromatin structure, malignant lymphomas or EBV-associated diseases are shared by at least two groups. Most groups make intensive use of proteomics and more generally of the technologies developed by the investigators. The imaging platform is also very useful for many research projects within the unit. Altogether, the available technical expertise is impressive, although the experts committee feels that its potential has not been fully exploited yet. The unit has been very successful in attracting external grant funding, in particular in form of PhD stipends. The 6 units PIs have published 150 papers during the last funding period, many of them in good or very good specialist journals such as J Exp Med., PLoS Pathogens or Blood and a few of them in high ranking non-specialist journals such as Mol Cell, PNAS or Genome research. The unit PIs have also collaborated to studies reported in excellent clinical (Lancet Oncol, JCO journals).

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

All team leaders are well known to their peers and their contributions to their respective fields is recognized through regular publications and communications in scientific meetings. Three group leaders have been granted a 'Prime d'excellence scientifique'. Many of the group leaders act as referees for scientific journals or as editors for books, some of them have organized scientific meetings and are members of French evaluation committees.

The international reputation of the deputy director led to the recruitment of three principal investigators from the ex-USSR. Furthermore, the unit now hosts a "Laboratoire international associé (LIA)" for 4 years (LIA LFR2O) funded by the CNRS and the Russian Academy of Sciences and co-headed by the deputy director. The majority of post-docs in the lab come from abroad.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment Two patents have been filed and two were granted in the last five years. Three groups receive grants from Servier Laboratories. Others collaborate with biotech companies such as Cellvax biotech company in form of a Convention industrielle de formation par la recherche (CIFRE), BioChoros with the support of ARC and OSEO grants and Abbot Laboratories (USA).

A better dialogue between Science and Society is an important goal in the unit. PIs are involved in continuous education programs and Associations for patients with Facioscapulohumeral dystrophy or suffering from spastic paraparesis. The director was one of the founding members of Institut Emilie du Châtelet pour les études sur les femmes, le sexe et le genre. The deputy director has a long record in the promotion of a rich dialogue between scientists and civil society. He has created the Partenariats institutions-citoyens pour la recherche et l'innovation (Picri) as well as the "centre francilien de l'innovation" in his important role as the elected vice-président of the regional council of Île-de-France in charge of Higher education, Research and Innovation. Lately, he has been granted a Mission on Sciences and Citizens by the president of CNRS.

Assessment of the unit's organisation and life

A most striking feature of the unit is the apparent satisfaction of its members with the management of the unit. Meetings with technicians and engineers, students and postdocs, as well as with young researchers showed that they are well integrated into the structure of the laboratory and that their contribution is acknowledged. Lab members praised the director for the high degree of transparency in all decision-making processes that are largely based on democratic principles. One worry was the difficulty of getting access to sufficient funding to keep large pieces of equipment, in particular microscopes, to the highest standards. Similarly, funds for young investigators to attend international meetings are very limiting. A general assembly attended by all lab members is held every three months to decide how to allocate resources and to deal with daily life matters in the lab. Team leaders meet once a month to discuss scientific policy issues and projects.

Lab members attend a mandatory weekly scientific meeting Master students, PhD fellows and post-docs organize journal clubs. The existence of a coffee room in the unit also favors internal discussions and exchanges between students.

The budgets granted every year by the CNRS and by Université Paris Sud and by Institut Gustave Roussy are mainly dedicated to consumables and tissue culture media that are used by all teams. In case one team runs into temporary financial trouble, ad hoc arrangements are decided between team leaders.

Three members of staff are officially in charge of maintaining health and safety regulations. A single technician, in charge of all administrative and financial matters, felt overwhelmed with work and was desperate for the unit to be able to recruit an additional post.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

Over the 2008-2013 period, 17 students have successfully defended their PhD thesis, 15 of whom are now post-docs in various labs in France or elsewhere. Each of these students published at least one publication as first author during their thesis. Another 14 PhD students are currently working in the lab and are enrolled in the PhD Program of Oncology administered by the Université Paris Sud. Discussions with the head the PhD Program of Oncology confirmed that the UMR 8126 has an excellent reputation. Eleven members of the unit can formally supervise students (HDR). Several PhD fellows in the laboratory have jointly participated in the creation in 2011 of the Association des jeunes chercheurs de l'Institut Gustave Roussy. The unit has also successfully supervised 20 MSc theses during the last 5 years.

The director and deputy director are heavily involved in the PhD Program in Oncology of Université Paris-Sud, the former as one of its founding members and current deputy director, the latter as a member in its scientific advisory board.

The deputy director also takes an active part in the organization of the Master of Oncology curriculum offered by the Université Paris Sud. One of the group leaders and another scientist are coordinators of specialized curricula within this Master.

Most PIs contribute to teaching in various Masters at the University Paris Sud (M2 Cancérologie and M2 Toxicologie humaine, évaluation des risques et vigilance), Université Pierre et Marie Curie (M2 Biologie moléculaire et cellulaire, spécialité Génétique), Universities Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (M2 recherche Biologie intégrative et moléculaire), Paris-Descartes (M2 Sciences du médicament, spécialité Pharmacochimie), and Paris-Est Créteil (M2 Biothérapies tissulaires, cellulaires er géniques). The unit is a regular training laboratory for various fellows preparing technician or engineer diplomas.

Assessment of the strategy and the five-year plan

The scientists in the unit have proposed a broad and ambitious research program that retains most of the previous research topics. However, following the retirement of the scientists in charge, research projects on neuroblastoma and some of the projects on malignant lymphomas will be discontinued. The director and the deputy director of the unit have announced their intention to retire at the end of the next funding period. The general flavor of the projects will remain identical which should guarantee continuity and the experts committee anticipates that the scientific output will globally remain at the same level. The application for renewal foresees the creation of 6 independent teams from the currently existing 3 teams. The question of the long-term orientation of the unit has to be raised. The committee did not currently identify a natural successor of the current director among the younger investigators. The next five years will be crucial for those scientists who will continue after 2018 to define a future research strategy, which should be aligned with the broad strategy of IRCRV/IGR. Overall the future projects are seen as well designed although the committee recommends some degree of prioritization to facilitate publication in journals with very high impact factors, which in turn would increase funding for large pieces of equipment and help attracting young investigators. The recruitment of two scientists as CR2 and CR1 are two important steps in the right direction but more efforts are necessary to keep and improve the ratio of young to experienced scientists within the unit. The proteomics core facility can increase the scope of its service projects, provided that adequate bioinformatics support can be secured. This core facility would greatly benefit all the groups on site. 3 Team 1 will be restructured -Please see below This is a young research group created during the year 2010. The group is working on a newly discovered multiprotein complex (the SEA complex) in yeast and linked to cancer in mammals. The identification and initial characterization of the complex were made by the group leader and were described in two publications in 2011 (in Mol. Cell Proteomics and Autophagy). Two follow up publications are in preparation. Studies are conducted in parallel in yeast and human models, and address both structural and functional aspects of the complex. In light of the short history and small size of this group (3 people: the group leader, 1 post-doc and 1 PhD student) the scientific production appears satisfying.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The group leader obtained the Prime d'Excellence of CNRS. In addition, the group leader has set up collaborations with three well-known international teams to study different structural aspects of yeast SEA complex. Members of the group were invited to give oral presentations although in a relatively small number of events (1 international and 2 national meetings, and 3 seminars). The group leader obtained grants to initiate the research program. However, the group will need to rapidly find other funding to pursue its research program.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

The configuration and research topic of this group do not allow evaluation of this criterion.

Of note, one member of this group (a student) co-funded and managed an association of young scientists.

Assesment of the unit's organisation and life

The work initiated by this young group is in direct line with the initial plan, proposed by the group leader. Students and postdocs are satisfied by the team management (implicating regular meetings, frequent informal exchanges and well-defined research projects).

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

The group leader trained 5 students (2 PhD, 1 Master 2 and 2 Master 1) and 2 post-docs. The group leader has obtained the "Habilitation à Diriger la Recherche" (HDR) in 2012.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

In the next five-year period, the group leader plans to:

1. study the function of the SEA complex both in yeast and human; 2. determine and analyze the structure of yeast SEA complex; 3. characterize the function of one member of the SEA complex, Nprl2, in anticancer treatments and DNA repair.

The project is original and in the continuity of the findings made by this group since its creation. It proposes to combine studies of the same complex in two organisms and to study both structural and functional aspects of the complex. It also proposes to further address the role of one specific member of the complex in cancer-related topics. Overall, this is an ambitious project and the group leader will need to make priorities among the main objectives by first capitalizing on their recent findings related to the yeast SEA complex.

Conclusion  Strengths and opportunities:

The group leader has initiated an original research program. Moreover, the results obtained confirmed the connection between this research program and cancer-related topics, with a potential for setting up collaborations with nearby research groups and/or clinicians. The group leader also established strong collaborations with wellknown experts to address the structural aspects of the project.

 Weaknesses and threats:

Funding for the next 3 years needs to be secure rapidly.

The current composition of the team is undersized compared to the proposed research program and the knowhow necessary to develop the human part of the project is rather limited.

International competition is developing.

 Recommendations:

Taking into consideration that despite a limited manpower of this group the conducted research project has a strong potential for important findings, the group leader needs to prioritize is different main aims to avoid a deleterious dispersion of the forces, as well as to publish and secure funding relatively rapidly.

Team 2:

Proteomics and Epigenetics Name of team leader: Mr Vasily OGRYZKO  Detailed assessments

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The group has gained international recognition within the proteomics / nuclear research community with the development of two novel sets of methodologies for I) the in vivo study of protein-protein interactions (PUB-MS and PUB-NChIP) and II) the investigation of the surface state (i.e. the protein conformation) of selected proteins (proteome footprinting). Considering the limited manpower (4 people: 1 PhD student, 1 post-doc, 2 technicians), the group has produced sixteen scientific publications both in topic-related journals (e.g. Journal of Proteome Research, Proteomics and Genome Research) and in more general journals (e.g. PLOS ONE, Molecular Cell and PNAS). The experts committee has unanimously acknowledged the scientific quality of this team.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The group is internationally recognized in the field of nuclear proteomics. The group head has been invited to national and international meetings and has given seminars in several (mainly estern) european countries. Furthermore, he has reviewed manuscripts and grants for international journals and funding agencies and participated in the application of one patent. Importantly, the group head and his engineer have an additional affiliation as staff of the proteomics platform (core unit) at the institute.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

Beside the presentation of a lecture in the popular lecture series at the Interdisciplinary University of Paris, the group leader has participated in a patent application in collaboration with a scientist from the Institut Pasteur (title of the application: process of screening a molecule as a candidate drug for the treatment of bipolar disorder).

Assesment of the unit's organisation and life:

The group has not only trained several PhD and Master students but has also hosted five international interns from Kazakhstan and the Ukraine. Furthermore, the group participates in international collaborations with Poland and Kazakhstan.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

The group has housed 4 Master students, 4 PhD students and 1 post-doc since 2008.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

In the next years, the group leader wants:

-to use the PUB-MS technique (which was developed in the lab) for the study of ubiquitinated and/or SUMOilated neighborhoods of target proteins; -to apply the proximity biotinylation technique to analyze genome topology on single-cell level; -and to serve as a proteomics platform for the whole institute.

Altogether the strong proteomic skills will favor their involvement in important projects both from this unit as well as strong local and international collaborations. These technical developments are clearly the major asset of this team that would ally both strong proteomic knowhow and their integration in novel scientifc projects.

Conclusion  Strengths:

The team is internationally recognized for his skills in proteomics as evidenced by the quality of the publications.

Their objectives are clearly stated and they are fully integrated in the lab and the IGR.

 Weaknesses:

One of the major challenges is the limited number of trained scientists and engineers that could help developping their projects.

 Recommandations:

The group has to cover the span between its own research interests and the requirements of an institute platform/core facility. Having both limited instrument time and restricted manpower, this balance might be challenging, which is why the experts committee expressed some concerns about the adequation between the number of projects and the team task-force. Unquestionable, the unit "Signaling, Nuclei and Innovations in Oncology" requires sophisticated proteomics support and the group has developed a unique proteomic tool box for the investigation of protein-protein interactions in the nucleus. Thus, the committee feels that there is a clear need for the identification of techniques which can be offered in the frame of the institute platform (e.g. standard techniques and analyses realizable by a trained technician) and technical developments carried out by the research group for its own research and the research needs of the unit. To widen the range of proteomic techniques for the institute platform and considering the acquisition of the new instrument (Q-Exactive from Thermo) with its wide application area, the employment of a bioinformatican for proteomic data analysis might be favorable.

Team 3:

Nuclear organization and pathological models Name of team leader: Mr Yegor VASSETZKY and Mr Marc LIPINSKI  Detailed assessments

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The group has a strong reputation in the field of nuclear organisation, with a particular emphasis on the pathogenesis of lymphomas and facio-scapulo-humeral dystrophy (FSHD). In the last quinquennium the group has been productive and published 29 manuscripts, with PIs as senior authors or co-authors. These include key manuscripts in high impact factor journals such as Genome Research (IF 14,37), JBC (IF 5,3) and Nuclear Acid Research (IF 8,05), as well as several manuscripts in Plos one (IF 3,7).

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

One of the froup leaders is a world expert in regulation of transcription and chromatin organisation. The other group leader is a leading researcher in the field of pathogenesis and nuclear organization of the autosomal dominant disorder facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD). Mr Yegor VASSETZKY is also chair of the International scientific advisory Board of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics (Kiev, Ukraine) and the editor of the scientific journal 'Biopolymers and Cell'. In the period of 2009-2013 he has been invited to give several lectures at international meetings.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment One of the group leaders was a vice president of the Regional Council Ile-de-France in charge of higher education, research and scientific and technical innovation from 2004 to 2010. He is a member of several Boards such as Université Paris-Diderot, Etablissement public d'amenagement et d'urbanisme de la Région Île-de-France, President of the Agence regionale de l'environnement et des nouvelles energies. Mr Yegor VASSETZKY is a member of the board of directors of a biotech company (Affitech, Denmark) and pursues an active collaboration with associations of patients through AFM, FSHD, Europe.

Assesment of the unit's organisation and life:

The number of staff includes 2-4 PhD students and 2 postdoctoral fellows. The group is suffering from a shortage of permanent technical staff.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

Three students have successfully completed PhD programmes and four are currently working in the group. ML is a deputy director of École Doctorale de Cancerologie in Université Paris Sud and organizer of the Master 2 diploma of Cancerologie in Université Paris Sud. Mr Yegor VASSETZKY lectures within M2 of Cancerologie (Université Paris-Sud) and at Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, Latvian University in Riga and Université Libanaise in Beyrouth.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

The proposed studies have four different aspects and are part of two independent projects. The first project is related to the nuclear organisation in lymphomas and is focusing on chromosomal regions whose nuclear spacial proximity renders recombination and occurrence of translocations. The group is aiming to identify loci in the proximity of IgH region on the chromosome 14 during normal B cell differentiation that have potential to become partners in translocations. The group is also aiming to determine whether HIV infection leads to nuclear reorganisation with consequent proximity of IgH and c-myc locus, that may be responsible for high frequency of t(8;14) observed in HIV positive Burkitt lymphoma. The second project is related to the pathogenesis of FSHD with two specific aims: a) to determine the consequences of observed SDF1/CXCR4 overexpression in FSHD muscle on cellular signalling; b) to use iPSC from FSHD muscles as a model system where it can be tested whether defective nuclear matrix attachment and reduced number of D4Z4 repeats represent the main cause of FSHD phenotype.

Conclusion

 Strengths

The team leaders are both internationally recognized in the field of nuclear organization in diseases such as lymphomas and FSHD. They have made important contribution in transcription regulation.

Their project is original and fully in the scope of their long term perspective on nuclear organization.

 Weaknesses

The identification of two different projects within the team: nuclear organization in lymphomas and pathogenesis of FSHD is highly challenging.

 Recommendations

The group has been productive and generated a number of important publications related to nuclear organisation in lymphomas and FSHD. Addressing the role of viral infection in the spatial nuclear organization is likely to give clear answers, while identification of potential IgH partners during B cell differentiation is more open ended and the relevance of the findings for lymphomagenenesis uncertain. Similarly, addressing the role of SFD1/CXCR4 axis in FSHD muscles is also likely to be successfully accomplished. The outcome of the last aim, ie modelling FSHD defect in iPSC is less predictable and consequently the group have decided to focus on correction of the molecular defect in differentiated muscle cells. Although this aim is not cancer related, it has a clear translational angle and is worth developing as it could serve as a paradigm for the molecular targeting in future cancer-related projects.

Team 4:

Oncogenesis and resistance to apoptosis in B cell lymphomas Name of team leader: Ms Joëlle WIELS  Detailed assessments

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The group has an international reputation in oncogenesis and apoptosis regulation in lymphoma cells. Publications from the group are good, including notable senior author papers 2009 Leukaemia (impact factor 8.3), 2010 Cell Signal (IF 4.2) and J Infect Dis (IF 5.8), 2011 Am J Pathol (IF 4.5) and Cell Death and Disease (IF 6.0). There are also substantial contributions to several high impact papers from a group member as coauthor, eg J. Clin Oncol (IF 18.0), Lancet Oncol (IF 21.8), Blood (IF 9.0).

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The group leader is an internationally recognised expert on oncogenesis in B lymphoma. She is particularly well known for research on mechanisms of apoptosis in lymphoma cells. Since 2010 the group has included two independent researchers. Altogether they have a very good track record in the fields of lymphoma and apoptosis mechanisms.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

The group leader serves on the Scientific Commission of the Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer and CNRS-APHP-CEA. She has also played a role in promotion of women in science through Institut Emilie du Chatelet. One of the staff scientists served as President of the scientific committee head of the Pôle de Biologie of Faculté de Médecine Paris Sud. She has also played an international role in promoting research and cancer treatment in low income countries, particularly in Africa.

Assesment of the unit's organisation and life

The teams is well organized with good interactions between scientist as well as an excellent training devoted to students.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

The group leader is a member in the scientific boards of the École Doctorale de cancérologie and of the Master Biologie Santé -spécialité Cancérologie de l'Université Paris-Sud. Since 2008, four students working in the group have obtained their M2, one has obtained her Doctorat de Pharmacie, four have successfully defended their PhD, and two PhD students are currently working in the group.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

The plan has several components. Continued investigation of Gb3 and glycosphingolipid signalling in BL cells has been central to the group's research for several years now and will be continued. The group is clearly well placed to undertake that work. Fundamental and more translational studies directed towards identifying novel agents that might stimulate cell death in lymphomas are a logical way forward and the group has a strategic advantage in systems that they plan to investigate. Finally the clinical and translational studies involving characterisation of early lymphoid lesions in children after transplantation and investigation of CLL in Senegal are likely eventually to provide a clinical benefit.

Conclusion  Strengths:

The group has maintained a very good level of research productivity.

The group leader makes a substantial leading international contribution.

 Weaknesses:

They need to foster the interactions between the apoptosis mechanisms in lymphomas and the studies in clinical samples from transplanted patients.

 Recommandations:

There is a coherent interest in apoptosis and lymphoma that binds the group together. It is expected that Professor Joëlle WIELS will retire at the end of the forthcoming 5 years period, together with two other scientists. The way to ensure research continuity will be to align research activity with the higher level research themes of the IGR, particularly genetics and epigenetics of cancer, immunology and DNA repair. Apoptosis research will lie within both immunology and DNA repair.  Detailed assessments

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The group has continued developing imaging technologies in its molecular microscopy facility. Using transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy they have studied various aspects of DNA metabolism. In particular they have studied a specific helicase, Srs2, revealing its role in the regulation of homologous recombination in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This work has been published in Molecular Cell and part is yet to be published. The team has also participated in the structural characterization of the filaments formed by the Cernunnos/XLF-LigIV human molecular complex, resulting in a publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More recently authors observed the action of the Rad51 recombinase that resulted in the removal of nucleosomes from double stranded DNA during the extension of the nucleoprotein filament. This is an important observation never reported before. Due to their expertise, members of this team are involved in numerous scientific collaborations.

Considering the small task-force the group has demonstrated a very good level of scientific production with 32 papers published.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The group is well recognized in the field of microscopy mediated analysis of DNA metabolism proteins. Group members have been participating to national and international meetings. The recruitment by Inserm, in 2013, of a young scientist as "chargée de recherche" has greatly boosted the capacity of working on DNA recombination proteins. The group leader participates to the scientific committee of the ARC and Inserm. He also teaches at Master level in various disciplines. Through these teaching engagements, the group leader promotes the laboratory, enhances its visibility and contributes to its attractiveness. The team also has long-term collaboration with the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, in Madrid. This collaboration enhances its international visibility.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment This issue was not applicable.

Assessment of the unit's organization and life

The team has an excellent organization with two young and enthousiastic researchs that confirm that this team is well organized and managed.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

They are involved in the training within Masters (UPMC) and workshops about electron microscopy.

Assessment of the five-year plan and strategy

In the next years, the group leader wants:

-to continue the studies concerning structural and functional characterization of DSBs repair machineries involved in NHEJ and to study telomere-Rap1 structure -to develop techniques allowing the isolation and analysis of DNA structures associated with a specific DNA locus to study the structure of stalled replication forks. This project is of high importance for the entire field of DNA replication and genome stability.

-to develop new tools for molecular and cellular imaging analysis and to investigate at the molecular level replication and recombination events. This project will be important for the institute and collaborators interested in using these techniques.

Conclusion  Strengths:

Excellent publication track with the most up to date techniques necessary to analyse DNA. The team leader is an internationally recognized expert in these methods. The young researchers associated to the project are talented.

 Weaknesses:

They need to focus their scopes of research and attract more students.

 Recommandations:

Although the projects proposed are in the field of expertise of the group, there are concerns about the feasibilty of these aims in the short term. These goals are quite ambitious and will require the development of techniques that do not exist at the moment and for which no preliminary evidence has been generated. There is the risk that the group might lose its edge on DNA recombination analysis in trying to elaborate these novel techniques, especially following the recruitment of a DNA recombination expert. Thus, there is a clear need in the nearest future to identify the major scientific aims and to prioritize defined projects. It would be helpful to recruit PhD students, who will be perhaps more attracted by more defined and achievable scientific goals.

Team 6

Tumor microenvironnement, exosomes and microRNAs in solid tumors Name of team leader: Mr Pierre BUSSON  Detailed assessments

Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

The group is known for its activities in two areas of translational research, one organized by the group leader, which was initially directed towards the identification and exploitation of novel targets for therapy against EBV-positive nasopharyngeal carcinomas and focused in the past 3 years on ovarian carcinomas and the study of tumor-derived exosomes. Another part of the team led by another senior scientist studies microRNAs in neuroblastoma. In the reporting period (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) the team members published a total of 39 original publications (13 with team members as first or last author) and 3 review articles; the team cites as its 5 major publications 1 Blood 2009 (IF 9.3), 1 Semin Cancer Biol 2012 (IF 7.4), 1 Br J Cancer 2011 (IF 5.2), 1 Virol J 2013 (IF 2.1) and 1 Infect Agent Cancer 2012 (no IF). The team members have contributed to major publications (IF>10), such a 1 Lancet Oncol 2009 (IF 25.1), 1 J Clin Oncol 2010 (IF 18), or 1 J Exp Med 2009 (IF 14.1). Together this is a highly productive group, which should consider increasing the level of publications led by the team even if this would decrease the overall number of publications.

Assessment of the unit's academic reputation and appeal

The group is recognized in the respective fields and team members present regularly work at national and international meetings. In the reporting period the team leader has been invited to two international meetings (Tozeur, Tunis, 2008;Canton, China, 2011) and several national and European institutes for seminars.

The team leader is involved is several activities of academic reputation, including a stirring committee (Herpes virus andcancer network of INSERM 2008-2010), several scientific committees for international workshops, is designated overseas coordinator of the university grants committee of Hongkong and got a PES (CNRS) 2012-2016.

The group is well funded by ANR, INCa, Ligue, laboratoire Servier and others but no grant has (yet) been obtained that extends funding beyond 2014.

Assessment of the unit's interaction with the social, economic and cultural environment

The team leader has been instrumental in formalizing a Translational Research hospital convention with the clinical teams of IGR (2011-14) and established collaboration with the Institut de Recherche Internationale Servier since 2011. In this context one patent has been filed; in addition the team has applied for another patent.

Assessment of the unit's organisation and life

The team is well organized.

Assessment of the unit's involvement in training through research

Eight theses have been completed in the reporting period, 2 are ongoing. Both the team leader and another senior scientist of the team coordinate curricula for M2 students.

Assessment of the strategy and the five-year plan

Based on its expertise the team will continue studies along three lines of research:

-project (1) continues the research of the immunosuppressive functions of tumor-borne gal9 and approaches to neutralize this effect. The idea is to generate more mABs with gal9-neutralising activity of selective monocyte and lymphocyte populations. For this project collaboration with teams of the Institut de Biologie de Lille (IBL) will provide important materials and expertise. The aim is to monitor if mAbs can be identified that systemically alter the effects of tumor-derived gal9 on distribution/survival od CD4+Th1 or Tregs. This project is definitely challenging but given the experience of the team it is worth pursuing.

-project (2) targets the promising and increasingly recognized potential of exosomes and other vehicles like "Lex-large extracellular chromatin fragments". The team will characterize these particles with an emphasis on TRAFinteracting LMP1 (infection membrane protein 1)-containing particles from EBV infected cells. They have obtained interesting preliminary results about naïve and LMP1 containing exosomes/Lex concerning histone content and the DNA binding ability of LMP1 itself.

-project (3) has as rationale to enforce activation of the EBV lytic cycle to induce apoptosis of latent EBVinfected cells. In the presentation and discussion of the project the team leader explained that a decision to embark on this project has still to be taken.

Conclusion  Strengths:

Excellent publication track. Very strong translational research in both the fields of immunosuppressive factors and EBV related pathologies. Very strong interactions with industry. The team leader is an internationally recognized expert in the field.

 Weaknesses:

They need to focus their scopes of research since among the three major projects presented the last one on the enforcement of EBV lytic cycle is novel and might be challenging.

 Recommandations:

The projects proposed are in fully in the field of expertise of the group. Specifically the galectin 9 project has to be continued due to their excellent knowhow in this field including novel mAb. However, they might consider within their project on exosomes that while the plans to identify specific cargo DNAs is well accepted, the team may think about increasing its ambition using direct amplification and massive parallel sequencing or even ChIP-seq. The field witnesses currently increasing efforts in the identification and characterization of circulating DNA, chromatin and tumor cells as non-invasive real-time surrogates for tumor tissue-based biomarkers, and the team is well positioned to move to a competitive edge in this field. Dans son évaluation, le comité a estimé que la qualité du travail réalisé était très bonne et incluait même des exemples d'excellents travaux. Il a apprécié la « philosophie » générale de l'équipe de direction, la capacité de l'unité à lever un bon niveau de financements sur projets, et les efforts considérables faits dans le domaine de la formation aux niveaux doctorat et master. Il s'est également félicité de l'ampleur prise par les collaborations développées au niveau international et de la capacité de l'unité à recruter de jeunes chercheurs, en particulier avec l'arrivée en 2010 d'une nouvelle responsable d'équipe et le recrutement par l'Inserm en 2013 d'une Chargée de recherche. Enfin, le comité a constaté l'excellence des plateformes accessibles et le potentiel d'interaction avec la clinique sur le site de l'Institut Gustave Roussy (IGR).

Quelques faiblesses, dont certaines que nous avions nous même identifiées, ont aussi été notées par le comité. Celles qui concernent le manque relatif de jeunes chercheurs à l'organigramme et l'absence d'expertise en bioinformatique méritent certainement d'être prises en considération et nous nous efforcerons d'agir en priorité pour corriger ces deux points même si le second relève aussi de la politique plus générale du développement de la recherche à l'IGR. Deux post-doctorants viennent d'ailleurs de rejoindre l'Unité dans les groupes de Svetlana Dokudovskaya et Vasily Ogryzko.

Pour ce qui concerne les recommandations émises par le comité, non seulement elles ne nous posent aucun problème mais elles rejoignent parfaitement les objectifs que nous nous sommes fixés et pour lesquels le soutien de nos tutelles et de notre hébergeur est absolument essentiel.

Nous voudrions en particulier souligner les points suivants.

-Nous avons déjà commencé à envisager l'avenir des équipes qui constituent l'UMR 8126 dans l'optique du départ en retraite, à la fin du prochain contrat, des actuels directrice et directeur adjoint. Nous apprécions que le comité ait noté que les thématiques de l'Unité s'intègrent bien dans les priorités définies par l'IGR et pourront en constituer d'incontestables atouts.

-Nous savons que maintenir un haut niveau de fonctionnalité et d'excellence des équipements disponibles dans l'unité nécessite des financements très importants. Nous sollicitons depuis plusieurs années le soutien des différentes tutelles (CNRS, Université Paris Sud, IGR) pour assurer la jouvence nécessaire des microscopes mais ces demandes restent malheureusement infructueuses. Des demandes auprès de la Communauté Européenne vont être faites. Pour ce qui concerne les contrats de maintenance des microscopes, seule une partie est prise en charge depuis 2012 par l'Université Paris Sud (programme MRM). Des demandes européennes vont être faites. Par contre, nous voulons noter l'excellent soutien apporté par l'IGR à la plateforme de protéomique dont Vasily Ogryzko est responsable. Dans un très proche avenir, nous espérons que nos deux tutelles et notre hébergeur uniront leurs efforts pour non seulement assurer la maintenance et des conditions optimales d'utilisation de la plateforme de microscopie moléculaire dont nous disposons aujourd'hui, mais aussi pour continuer de l'améliorer, en particulier avec l'acquisition d'un microscope à force atomique de nouvelle génération fortement souhaitée par l'équipe dirigée par Eric Le Cam.

-Pour ce qui concerne la pérennité des financements sur projets qui constitue une remarque récurrente du comité, nous tenons à souligner que tous les chefs d'équipes font des efforts considérables pour assurer leur fonctionnement quotidien. Il faut noter que depuis début 2014, Svetlana Dokudovskaya a obtenu un financement de la Ligue contre le cancer et que la lettre d'intention pour une demande de contrat à l'ANR coordonnée par Pierre Busson a été retenue.

-Nous sommes pleinement conscients de la nécessité de trouver très rapidement le moyen de recruter un(e) bioinformaticien(ne) qui développerait ses travaux dans l'Unité. Nous avons eu la chance d'avoir à l'effectif pendant deux ans une bioinformaticienne dans le cadre du programme européen des « Marie Curie Fellows ». Nous n'avons malheureusement pas pu la stabiliser à l'IGR, malgré notre désir et nos tentatives. Là encore, nous espérons qu'il sera possible de trouver dans un avenir proche, avec nos tutelles et notre hébergeur, des solutions de financement pour répondre à cette recommandation du comité.

-Nous avons aussi bien conscience qu'il serait souhaitable d'attirer de nouveaux chercheur-e-s afin de développer et/ou de pérenniser les projets scientifiques actuels ou à venir (notamment pour l'équipe de Joëlle Wiels dont les chercheuses actuelles partiront en retraite à la fin du contrat). Une candidature d'un jeune chercheur qui souhaite rejoindre l'équipe de Vasily Ogryzko est d'ailleurs en cours d'évaluation par l'Inserm. De plus, et bien que le contexte général n'y soit pas favorable, nous nous efforcerons comme nous l'avons fait dans les années récentes de renforcer notre potentiel en personnel technique.

N5:

  Other professors (Emeritus Professor, on-contract Professor, etc.) 1 1 Other researchers from Institutions (Emeritus Research Director, Postdoctoral students, visitors, etc.spent at least 12 months in the unit* 12 Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken 1 Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions 11 10 2  Overall assessment of the interdisciplinary unit Strengths and opportunities related to the context 1) The overall scientific quality of the work is very good, with some examples of excellent work. PIs are recognized in their field of research for the originality and vision of their projects.

4N4:2

   Team-by-team analysis (Previous team 1 will be presented split into 4 teams) Permanent professors and similar positions 1 N2: Permanent EPST or EPIC researchers and similar positions 5 N3: Other permanent staff (without research duties) 4 Other professors (PREM, ECC, etc.) 1 N5: Other EPST or EPIC researchers (DREM, Postdoctoral students, visitorsPlease see below for the details about the future teams spent at least 12 months in the unit 9 Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken 1 Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions 8

  Intracellular traffic, macromolecular complexes and cancerName of team leader: Ms Svetlana DOKUDOVSKAYA  Detailed assessments Assessment of scientific quality and outputs

N6

  Other professors (PREM, ECC, etc.) N5: Other EPST or EPIC researchers (DREM, Postdoctoral students, visitors, etc.) 1 spent at least 12 months in the unit 3 Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions 2 2

N6

  Other professors (PREM, ECC, etc.) N5: Other EPST or EPIC researchers (DREM, Postdoctoral students, visitors, etc.) 1 spent at least 12 months in the unit Number of Research Supervisor Qualifications (HDR) taken Qualified research supervisors (with an HDR) or similar positions 2 2

  door) Expert committee members with the AERES Scientific delegate (DS) (the role and procedures of AERES) 09.00 am Director of the unit: presentation of the past activities and project 10Oncogenesis and resistance to apoptosis in B cell lymphoma (Ms Joëlle WIELS) 04.30 pm Team 5 -Genome maintenance, Molecular microscopies and bionanosciences (head of the unit (if necessary) 11.00 am Private meeting of the experts committee (in presence of the DS) 01.00 pm End of the visit 01.00 pm Lunch Villejuif le 19 mars 2014 Agence d'évaluation de la recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur (AERES) Membres du panel de notation Madame, Monsieur, chers collègues,Nous avons pris bonne connaissance du rapport établi par le comité de l'Aéres suite à la visite qu'il a effectuée les 14 et 15 novembre derniers afin d'évaluer notre unité de recherche. Nous souhaitons en premier lieu remercier les membres du comité d'évaluation à la fois pour la qualité de leur écoute et leurs questions très pertinentes le jour de la visite ainsi que pour leur rapport tout à fait précis et constructif. Nous n'avons pas relevé d'erreurs factuelles à rectifier dans ce projet de rapport.

In the future will be team

 Supervising bodies general comments

to the Decree of 3 november 2006 1 , -Mr. Didier HOUSSIN, president -Mr

-Définir des priorités thématiques au sein de l'Unité est une approche que nous envisageons afin de tirer le meilleur parti des compétences des personnels et de notre présence à l'IGR. En ce sens, le recrutement récent par l'Inserm d'une jeune chercheuse, spécialiste de la thématique de la « recombinaison homologue », dans le groupe d'Eric Le Cam s'inscrit tout à fait dans leurs objectifs thématiques maintenant ciblés plus clairement vers l'étude de la réparation, de la recombinaison de l'ADN et de la caractérisation des intermédiaires de réplication. Par ailleurs, pour ce qui concerne les craintes exprimées quant aux études menées chez l'humain par le groupe de Svetlana Dokudovskaya, il nous semble que l'environnement de l'Unité et plus largement de l'IGR où les compétences sont nombreuses pour les études chez l'humain lui permettra d'acquérir les savoir-faire nécessaires. Enfin, Vasily Ogryzko prendra en considération les recommandations émises par le comité et définira clairement l'ensemble des techniques offertes par la plateforme de protéomique.

-Enfin, nous sommes fermement déterminés à continuer de développer nos relations avec les secteurs cliniques de l'IGR, comme indiqué dans le document préparatoire au renouvellement de contrat avec l'Université Paris Sud et le CNRS.

Nous vous prions d'accepter, chers collègues, l'expression de nos plus cordiales salutations.

Joëlle Wiels, directrice

Marc Lipinski, directeur adjoint