Greetings from Jérôme Baufreton for 2023

The entire Bordeaux Neurocampus team joins me in wishing you all the best for the year 2023.

It has been almost a year since I took over the direction of the department with the help of my two assistant directors, Aude Panatier and Mathieu Wolff. It was an honor to take over these functions and I am happy to continue the work done by Nathalie Sans since 2019 with the members of our community: the director board and the members of the department council representing researchers, teacher-researchers, BIATSS and doctoral students/post-doctoral researchers. The constructive and transparent dialogue established with each member of the community allows us to be efficient and serene in the realization of our missions, which are research, innovation, training and scientific dissemination.

On the research side, as every year, we can be proud of the awards and funding obtained by our staff and units. Above all, 2022 was the first full year of operation of the GPR. The support of the university, through this major research program, has enabled the recruitment of 23 staff in the units. This is a great opportunity to move forward in the challenge of understanding the functioning of the brain! The year 2022 ended on December 16 with the Research Day at the Charles Perrens Hospital, which highlighted the links between our two structures. I hope that this will reflect future collaborations and the consolidation of relations between basic and clinical research.

On the training side, we can underline the investment of the Masters program managers, who were able to cope with the lack of classrooms at the beginning of the academic year, with the support of our research units, thus demonstrating the solidarity of our community. Thanks also to the team of the School of Neuroscience who found the energy to organize no less than 5 Cajal courses this year. In addition, the Graduate Program has seen some new faces on its executive committee, welcome to all!

Finally, after the difficulties encountered in 2020 and 2021 due to the health crisis, we are happy to have seen in 2022 the resumption of our usual activities in terms of scientific animation, especially for the seminars. I would like to thank the entire community for its investment and I salute the individual and collective initiatives on open science, dissemination to the general public, and also sustainable development. It is impossible for me to mention all the examples of the dynamism of neuroscience in Bordeaux, but I would like to welcome BrainStorm, a journal produced by our Master and PhD students.

For 2023, my first wish is simple: that we continue on the path we have been on for almost 30 years, since the federative institute was created in 1994, with the success that we know. Without resting on our laurels, of course! This is thanks to everyone’s involvement, to the ever-widening scope of our fields of expertise, to actions that have been consolidated or developed in research and training, and to the complementarity of our units. This will also be achieved thanks to a sufficiently large budget for scientific activities – it will be stable compared to 2022.

On the agenda, the return to normalcy in 2022 continues and the 2023 calendar is already well filled. Among the key moments of 2023, I give you an appointment on the afternoon of March 2nd for the first edition of the Platform day and also on June 27th for a day in tribute to Joel Swendsen. Also to be noted, very soon, a meeting with the start-ups housed at the Broca Center and the return of the tech’talks thanks to the work of the students of the department council. Finally, I can’t forget that we will be welcoming high school students during Brain Week, after three years without workshops, in partnership with the Rectorat.

Obviously, a key element for the coming year will be energy sobriety. Here again, it is a question of acting collectively, and of being vigilant individually on heating and lighting, on equipment consumption, on digital technology. I would like to echo the wishes of Dean Lewis, President of the University, on this important issue.

Our community is what it is today thanks to a collective vision, thanks to a “travailler ensemble” that is more relevant than ever: it will be symbolized in 2023 by the long-awaited opening of the new Biology and Health building, which will house the INCIA but also the Circé platform of INCIA and NutriNeuro. This new infrastructure can be a fertile ground for developing new interactions within our community. The regrouping of all our teams in the same geographical area – Carreire Campus, CHU and Charles Perrens Hospital – is a great moment for Bordeaux Neurocampus.

I wish you all a very good year in 2023, both personally and professionally.

Jérôme Baufreton, Director of Bordeaux Neurocampus

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2022 in figures

Scientific animation

– 45 seminars (PhD seminars, Friday seminars, or impromptu seminars)
– 5 Cajal courses: 101 students, 92 lectures
– 5 symposia
– 2 international conferences: 340 participants in total
– 10 Reproducibilitea sessions
– Bordeaux Neurocampus Day: 250 participants, 40 posters presented
– GPR day
– Doctoral Research Award day

Publications

332 publications including 233 in open access and 7 highly cited

Funding / awards

1 ERC
3 ANR JCJC
19 ANR PRC
3 ANR PRCI
2 FRM teams
2 PEPR
CNRS Silver Medal for Laurent Groc
CNRS collective crystal for the BIC