Hello,
Welcome to my website!
My name is Chloé Mariant. I have now been working for two years towards my PhD in the Comparative Biomedical Sciences program at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. In this page, I will aim to answer the following question: Why interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences?
My path has led me to it.
As far as I can remember, I have always been interested in sciences, and more particularly, biology. Since high-school and during all of the following years, I always have been the student who was excited about dissections, and field trips, and I always had the best grades in that discipline. After I graduated high-school, I enrolled in a fundamental biology program at the University of Nantes, France, where I studied all kinds of biology, all day long all year long. Hearing about algae’s metabolism, how sponges live in the ocean, how human DNA replication produces mutations, how the father of genetics Mendel discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance, how humans can modify mice embryos in order to obtain a living study model… Is fascinating. Although, as much as I loved it, I realized that I wanted to be able to use that knowledge to develop new therapeutics for human and animal health. I switched paths and decided to work towards a Master’s degree in biotechnology engineering, which I obtained three years ago. During my master’s studies is when I discovered the potential of biomedical sciences and interdisciplinarity. Indeed, the ENSTBB in Bordeaux is financed mainly by world renowned industries such as Sanofi, and students worked on multiple group projects in order to characterize a new drug, find innovative ideas to create new start-ups, or factory production problem solving. Now, during my PhD work in a gastroenterology/neurobiology laboratory, I produce fundamental data that, I hope, will be useful one day to develop new therapeutics.
Interdisciplinary biomedical sciences are a unique power.
Each scientific discipline builds more knowledge everyday. Scientists tend to specialize more and more, and it is becoming hard to get a bigger picture while trying to solve a broad problem. Interdisciplinarity is a unique opportunity to bring scientists specialized in different disciplines together, in order to tackle a complex problem from different angles, and share their knowledge with others. However, interdisciplinary teams bring their own challenges, considering that each team member has a different and unique education and background compared to their colleagues. Therefore, it is important for the team to have an identified leader on which they can rely on and get support from. As I think interdisciplinary biomedical sciences is a unique necessary power, I decided to work on my leadership philosophy during this semester, and this website is the fruit of my work on that subject.