Joint Doctoral Degree : France (UPMC) / Australia (UNSW)
PhD under a cotutelle agreement
PhD under a Cotutelle Agreement - world-class student experience
I was awarded an international studentship by the French government, known as Bourse Ministérielle, fléchée internationale”, to undertake my PhD under a cotutelle agreement between two universities: UPMC (Paris, France) and the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).
A cotutelle is an agreement on joint supervision at the doctoral degree level between two universities from two countries. The cotutelle agreement regulates enrollment, supervision, and the evaluation of the candidate's doctoral thesis. This type of Ph.D. involves extensive paperwork for establishing partnership agreement forms between the different institutions (UPMC and UNSW, in my case).
As a Ph.D. student enrolled full-time at both Universities, I experienced a significantly increased administrative workload, with doubled deadlines, reports, presentations, and lab trainings, compared to a standard Ph.D. thesis completed within a single university. I also had to adapt to two different universities, cultures, languages, and higher education systems while managing twice the amount of paperwork and administrative tasks at a very young age. All of this was in addition to completing modules in Paris, conducting lab work in Banyuls - South of France, Grenoble (Co-I’s Lab) and Sydney in Australia, as well as writing papers, and presenting results at international conferences.
Despite the substantial logistical challenges, I take great pride in the fact that my hard work during my Ph.D. led to the publication of six papers, with five of them that I published as the first author during my 3.5-year studentship. I also had the opportunity to present my molecular results as oral communications at two international conferences, one in Luxembourg and the other in Bath, UK. This dedication and effort resulted in a (well-deserved) double diploma. :)
This experience equipped me with excellent organisational skills, as my two labs couldn't have been more geographically distant (France and Australia), and it helped me become even more independent, creative, and adept at problem-solving.
Just two years after my appointment as a Lecturer at the University of Stirling (UoS), I was eager to replicate this fantastic experience as the primary supervisor of the first two cotutelle students at UoS. I am grateful that the University of Stirling supported this new type of 50/50 match-funded studentship. My leadership in establishing this new international partnership required expert knowledge of the higher education systems in three different countries (UK, France, and Belgium). The first two Ph.D. students I supervised, Augustin Geron and Clement Lozano, along with my esteemed colleagues Pr. Ruddy Wattiez and Pr. Philippe Lebaron, have successfully completed their Ph.D.s. They are greatly missed in the team, and the entire experience was a wonderful teamwork and human experience, both as a student and supervisor.
PhD in Marine Microbiology
Title:
Physiological and molecular responses of the marine oligotrophic ultramicrobacterium Sphingopyxis Alaskensis rb2256 to visible light and ultraviolet radiation
Abstract
Ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth’s surface (UVR, 280-400 nm) may penetrate deep into the clear oligotrophic waters influencing a large part of the euphotic layer. Marine heterotrophic bacteria at the surface of the oceans are especially sensitive to the damaging solar radiation due to their haploid genome with little or no functional redundancy and lack of protective pigmentation. In a context of climate change and ozone depletion, it is clearly important to understand the physiology and underlying molecular UVR responses of abundant marine bacteria species. We chose the marine ultramicrobacterium Sphingopyxis alaskensis as a reference species to study the impact of solar radiation due to its numerical abundance in oligotrophic waters and its photoresistance, previously reported. For this purpose, we focused on the formation of the two major UVB-induced DNA photoproducts (CPDs and 6-4PPs) as well as the differential protein expression under solar radiation. We first demonstrated that the GC content of prokaryotic genome had a major effect on the formation of UVB-induced photoproducts, quantified by HPLC-MS/MS. Due to its high GC content, S. alaskensis presented a favoured formation of highly mutagenic cytosine-containing photoproducts and therefore would be more susceptible to UVinduced mutagenesis. By comparing S. alaskensis to another marine bacterium Photobacterium angustum, we observed for the latter strain a remarkable resistance to high UVB doses associated with a decrease in the rate of formation of CPDs explained by a non-conventional activity of photolyase. We also demonstrated that DNA damage in S. alaskensis was markedly modulated by growth temperature and time spent in stationary phase. In order to assess the effects that environmental UV-R had on regulatory networks and pathways of S. alaskensis, and determine how the cell’s physiology was affected, a quantitative proteomics investigation was performed. Changes in proteome were analyzed, with the recent and powerful mass spectrometry based approach using iTRAQ methodology. Approximately, one third of the proteome of S. alaskensis was identified, with 119 statistically and significantly differentially abundant proteins. Cellular processes, pathways and interaction networks were determined and gave us unique insight into the biology of UV response and adaptation of S. alaskensis.