Collège de France (IBDM).

Thomas Lecuit trained at the Ecole Normale Supérieur of Paris, did a PhD in developmental biology at EMBL in Heidelberg and received a postdoctoral training in cell biology at Princeton University with Eric Wieschaus. In 2001 he joined the the Institut de biologie du développement in Marseille (IBDM) where he heads a research team.
Thomas Lecuit’s research focuses on morphogenesis, i.e. the origin of forms in living organisms, such as a neuron or an embryo. During embryogenesis, millions of cells divide, move, change shape and collectively give rise to a complex organism. What are the mechanical forces at work, and what information flows guide these complex processes to completion? His interdisciplinary team uses Drosophila as a model organism, and a combination of experimental approaches to observe, characterise and disrupt the physical and biological properties of development, and works with physicists on theoretical and modelling approaches.
Thomas Lecuit is Director of the Turing Centre for Living Systems in Marseille, an interdisciplinary centre that studies complexity and self-organisation in biology, drawing on contributions from physics, computer science, mathematics and biology.
In 2016, he was appointed Professor at the Collège de France in Paris, chair “Dynamics of Living Systems”. He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, EMBO, member of French Académie des Sciences and of Academia Europaea. He is also laureate of several Prizes, including the Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences (2015) and Silver Medal of CNRS (2015).