We count only 29% of women in research in France. And there is no objective reason to prevent parity among these scientists. In this science festival week35 young researchers are being honored this Wednesday in Paris. Winners of the France 2024 L’Oréal – Unesco Young Talent Prize. And among them, two young women from Charente-Maritime: Amélie Joly and Marie Materna.
Marie Materna is originally from Saint-Jean-d’Angely, and she is proud of it : “I grew up in the heart of nature, says the 27-year-old young woman. This allowed me to tickle my curiosity, to understand the complex mechanisms of the nature that surrounded me. And then, my family pushed me enough to develop this curiosity.” A family not necessarily scientific for Marie, mother a school psychologist, father a soldier.
“We are pushing the frontiers of knowledge”
No great scientists in the family either for Amélie Joly, who has a mother who works with disabled people, and a father who is a computer scientist. The 28 year old young woman lived in Rochefort where she passed her baccalaureate before continuing in a prestigious Parisian high school.
This is where the young woman discovered her vocation, during an internship in a prep class: “I discovered what a research lab was, and I really loved it. I was completely fascinated. When you do research, you actually push the frontiers of knowledge.”
The consequences of malnutrition on children
Ten years later, here is Amélie two weeks away from presenting his doctoral thesisprepared in the Lyon functional genomics laboratory (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, CNRS, Université Claude-Bernard Lyon 1). This biologist studies the consequences of malnutrition on child development, particularly protein deficiency.
Work carried out on animals. “What they showed, summarizes Amélie Joly, This is because males who are malnourished will tend to favor sexual maturation at the expense of growth, while females will have the opposite. Males and females behave quite differently. And that’s what I find fascinating and what I want to understand and describe better.”
“An impact on humans”
“I had the chance to discover the first ten humans with a serious and rare form of illness” announces, with a touch of pride, Marie Materna. She is immunology post-doctoral position in a lab at Necker hospital (Laboratory of human genetics of infectious diseases, INSERM (U1163), Imagine Institute, Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, University of Paris cite).
Marie studies everything that causes the dysfunction of a gene, P-TCα. And what fascinates her about this research is “that we can have an impact on humans. In this case I worked with patients who, when we began to study them, did not have a diagnosis. And we try to provide answers and solutions. We are in something very optimistic.”
“An exceptional springboard”
Research that caught the eye of the Academy of Sciences. The key is integration into the prestigious Young Talents program of the L’Oréal Foundation, among 35 young women winners in 2024. “It’s really a chance to have this recognition” recognizes Marie Materna with emotion. “An exceptional springboard”, ideal for a career start.
It has been almost 20 years since the L’Oréal foundation distributed this very prestigious prize, recognized by the scientific community for its seriousness, and which has benefited 405 young women since its creation. A prize also provided with funding: €15,000 for doctoral students, 20,000 euros for post-doctoral students.
“And why not Nobel Prizes?”
These amounts will make it possible to finance trainingin leadership, in management, in negotiation. “Things that we are not necessarily expected to have automatically in a scientific career” specifies Marie Materna. Useful resources for leading research teams in the future – women are rare in this role. “And why not Nobel Prizes?” boasts Marie Materna.
Amélie Joly dreams of quickly return to your Rochefort high schoolMerleau-Ponty, to testify and transmit his taste for science to high school girls, often victims of self-censorship. “It’s super important to trust yourself and surround yourself with people who support them” insists Amélie Joly.
Fight gender stereotypes
The Rochefortoise researcher wants to combat stereotypes: “it’s not just men all alone in their lab in a white coat with tousled hair like Einstein” smiles Amélie Joly, who insists on the fact that science is above all practiced in a team. Before concluding: “Sciences are above all a profession made as much for women as for men.”
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