Prix de l'Académie des sciences 2024: 5 scientists rewarded

MYRIAM BENISTY - MRS VICTOR NOURY PRIZE (NÉE CATHERINE VICTOIRE LANGLOIS) - FONDATION DE L'INSTITUT DE FRANCE

Annual prize (€10,000) created in 1992 and awarded on the recommendation of the Académie des Sciences, to encourage the development of science in its most diverse forms.

Myriam Benisty is an assistant astronomer at the Lagrange laboratory of the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice, and heads a research group funded by a grant from the European Research Council (ERC), which aims to understand the formation and evolution of planetary systems. In particular, she and her team are seeking to detect nascent planets while characterizing their birth environment, using cutting-edge astronomical observations provided by European telescopes on the ground and in space.

YANN HELLO - ADRIEN CONSTANTIN DE MAGNY PRIZE - FONDATION RHEIMS

Biennial prize (€5,500) created in 1963, awarded to a craftsman or scientist, with no diploma required, whose practical work has been deemed remarkable by the Academy.

Yann Hello is a research engineer at the IRD and head of R&D at the Geoazur laboratory.Yann Hello's career has focused on the development, in cooperation with SMEs, of autonomous, cabled underwater instrumentation for earthquake observation and deep-sea imaging of our planet. He has conducted offshore campaigns in all the world's oceans, enabling him to anticipate the technical developments needed to tackle today's scientific issues.

CORNELIA MEINERT AND GUILLAUME SANDOZ - SIMONE AND CINO DEL DUCA FOUNDATION GRANT

This medal is awarded to a fully-active scientist of any nationality working in a French public or private research laboratory, who has made a particularly promising contribution to the development of his or her discipline, without restriction as to the fundamental or applied nature of the research.

Cornelia Meinert is CNRS Research Director at the Institut de Chimie de Nice, CNRS Université Côte d'Azur. She studies the origin of biological homochirality, i.e. the uniformity of molecular chirality observed in living organisms. Her research focuses on the hypothesis that this phenomenon may have been initiated by interstellar photochemical processes, well before the formation of our Solar System. By deciphering this mechanism, she hopes to shed light on how the molecules at the basis of life may have been influenced by cosmic events, offering crucial insights into the origins of life itself.

Guillaume Sandoz is CNRS Research Director at the Institut de biologie Valrose (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, Inserm); he is interested in ion channels and their role in neuronal communication. His research focuses on developing cutting-edge techniques for controlling their activity and animal behavior with light, in order to understand their involvement in pathologies such as epilepsy, migraine, and hereditary diseases, opening up new therapeutic avenues.

Congratulations also to :

XAVIER PENNEC, AMPERE DE L'ELECTRICITE DE FRANCE PRIZE

Annual prize (€50,000) created in 1974 by Électricité de France to reward one or more scientists working in a French laboratory for outstanding research work in mathematical or physical sciences, whether fundamental or applied.

Research director in the Inria Epione project-team (Inria center at Université Côte d'Azur), Xavier Pennec is a specialist in geometric statistics, at the frontier of mathematical sciences.ometric statistics, at the frontier between statistics, differential geometry, computer science and applications in computational medicine. His work lays the mathematical foundations and proposes innovative algorithms for applications in image analysis and shape statistics, including translation into clinical research. He was elected Fellow of the MICCAI Society in 2017, was awarded an ERC advanced fellowship in 2018 and a 3IA Côte d'Azur chair in artificial intelligence in 2019.