National Institute of Health and Medical Research Inserm

Véronique Perrier is the coordinator of ExpoSignalz and research lead for objective #3. She is a neurobiologist expert in the neuro-physiopathology of neurodegenerative diseases. After completing her PhD at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and a postdoctoral training on prion diseases at the UCSF, in the laboratory of Dr Stanley Prusiner (Nobel Prize of Medicine 1997), Dr. Perrier obtained a scientist position at the CNRS in Montpellier in 2000. Since 2015, her research has focused on the impact of environmental pollutants on neurodevelopment and neurodegenerative diseases. In 2021, she joined the Proteinopathies team at the Montpellier Institute of Neurosciences, where she led a group on “The role of environmental pollutants in neurodegenerative diseases”. She has received several awards for her research, Gene Therapy Prize from ThermoFisher in 2008, Chercheur d’Avenir Award in 2009 from Occitanie region, and the Drieu-Chollet Prize from the French National Academy of Medicine in 2020.

Joan is a leading researcher in the field of protein folding and amyloid formation. His work focuses on understanding how proteins misfold and aggregate, contributing to diseases such as Alzheimer’s. After completing his PhD at the University of Girona (Catalonia) in 2000, he carried out postdoctoral research in France on the mechanisms of amyloid formation.

In 2006, he launched his own research programme as a Senior Scientist at Inserm. He now leads a research group at the Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier (INM), developing innovative approaches that combine protein biochemistry with advanced studies of amyloids, with the goal of improving diagnostics and unravelling the molecular mechanisms that drive amyloid polymorphism and toxicity.

For almost 20 years, Carole has been working on pluripotent stem cells in the context of neurodegenerative diseases. She is now the head of the group “Stem cells and neurodegenerative diseases” at the Institute of Neurosciences of Montpellier. She has also previously been involved in several national and international projects.

Carole received two research prizes, and grants from the American CJD Foundation and was also the project manager of the Montpellier Center of Excellence in neurodegeneration (Montpellier-CoEN, AVIESAN Labelisation).

Julie is currently Research Director at CNRS and a neuroscientist specialising in behavioural psychopharmacology, reward processes, and social behaviour in mice. She holds a State Doctorate in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2000) and completed a PhD in Neurosciences and Pharmacology (1997–2002) at the University of Bordeaux, where she studied the role of mu opioid receptors in learning, anxiety, and motivation. Julie is leading research objective #4.

During her postdoctoral research at the University of Sussex, she explored the effects of alcohol withdrawal and cue conditioning. In 2006, she joined Brigitte Kieffer’s lab at IGBMC (Strasbourg), where she used knockout mice to investigate opioid receptor function, validated mu receptor-null mice as an autism model, and identified mGlu4 as a potential therapeutic target. Recruited by CNRS in 2014, she co-led a team with Jérôme Becker at PRC (the chemical risk prevention unit).

Since 2020, at iBrain, her research has focused on the neurobiology, environmental causes, and treatment of social deficits in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Marion is an Associate Professor at the University of Montpellier and is affiliated with the Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier (Inserm U1298), within the NeuroPEPS team. She is an environmental epidemiologist whose research focuses on the impact of environmental exposures—particularly ambient air pollution—on human health, with a specific emphasis on brain ageing.

She has led or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications investigating the effects of ambient air pollution on cognitive decline and dementia in older adults, as well as on brain development in children.

Emeline works as a researcher at Inserm’s Population-Based Epidemiological Cohorts Unit and the Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (CESP) in Paris. An engineer by training, and a PhD in agronomy completed at INRAe, the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, she acquired extensive experience in environmental research and environmental epidemiology, particularly in characterising various residential exposures in the general population.

She has developed innovative methods for estimating exposure, with strong expertise in geomatics, especially in the CONSTANCES cohorts, for which she leads environmental health research. She has been involved in a dozen funded projects (including by Horizon Europe), and coordinates projects on air quality and climate change.