Claire Gachon is a graduate from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris) who originally trained as a molecular plant pathologist. In 2006, she received a Marie Curie IEF Fellowship followed by a Marie Curie reintegration grant, to investigate the ecology and physiology of diseases of marine algae using an interdisciplinary array of approaches (mostly biochemistry, molecular biology, genomics and bioinformatics). Notably, Claire has developed a model interaction between the intracellular oomycete pathogen Eurychasma dicksonii and the brown algal genome model Ectocarpus siliculosus. This model has the strength of being both of environmental and fundamental relevance, enabling issues to be addressed ranging from the impact of diseases in marine ecosystems to the evolution of pathogenicity among protists (grants NE/F012705/1 & (NE/J00460X/1). Her research now also encompasses freshwater algae (French ANR consortium ROME), and a broader range of pathogens, with an increasingly pronounced focus on applied topics (three grants from the Scottish business development fund Genomia). Recently, Claire successfully led a £338k NERC bid for a high power computing facility at SAMS, with multidisciplinary applications spanning across bioinformatics and marine modelling (NE/L013029/1). Thanks to her previous work on plants, Claire has a strong background in domestication, crop improvement, and marker-assisted breeding, which led her to develop the worldwide GlobalSeaweed network on algal breeding and cultivation (NE/L013223/1). Other works include cell biology and proteomics of diseased seaweeds, genome annotation of algae as well as pathogens . In only ten years, Claire has authored 27 peer-reviewed scientific articles (10 as first author) and 5 book chapters.

Reader in Molecular Phycology