Chris Bowler's Biography

Chris Bowler, Director of Plant Biology, ENS/Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique

Chris Bowler is Director of Research at CNRS and is Director of Environmental and Evolutionary Genomics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. Following a degree in microbiology at the University
of Warwick, UK, and PhD at the University of Ghent in Belgium he performed postdoctoral studies at The Rockefeller University in New York, USA. In 1994 he established his own research group working on higher plants and marine diatoms at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples Italy and in 2002 he took up his current position in Paris. He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific articles in the best international scientific journals such as Nature, Science and Cell. His major interest is in understanding the response of plants and marine diatoms to environmental signals. In marine diatoms he established molecular tools to assess gene function and has played a major role in coordinating the whole genome sequencing of several species. Using functional genomics he has revealed the cellular response of diatoms to nutrients such as iron and nitrogen, to different wavelengths of light, and to allelopathic infochemicals. He is one of the scientific coordinators of the Tara Oceans expedition, is member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) since 1995, recipient of the CNRS Silver Medal in 2010, a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Award in 2012, associate editor of several major scientific journals including Science, and member of the scientific advisory boards of several internationally renowned research institutes and private companies.