COMMITTEE

Aurore Van de Walle, a permanent researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), conducts her work at the Institut Curie in Paris. Following the completion of her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida in 2015, she pursued postdoctoral research at the Matière et Systèmes Complexes laboratory at Université Paris Cité. Since 2020, she has held a permanent research position at CNRS, where she now leads studies within the Physics of Cells and Cancer laboratory.

Her research lies at the intersection of nanomedicine, biomaterials, and cell biology, with a focus on understanding how magnetic nanoparticles interact with biological systems. She studies their internalization, biotransformation, and functional integration within cells, exploring their potential for applications in regenerative medicine and cancer therapies. In the field of tissue engineering, her work includes the development of innovative approaches such as magnetic bioprinting, which enables the precise assembly of complex tissue structures.

Claire Wilhelm earned her PhD in soft matter physics in 2003 and has since applied materials science principles to advance nanomedicine. Her research aims to elucidate the mechanisms and biological fate of magnetic nanoparticles within complex cellular environments. She has developed two main axes: (i) biophysical approaches, supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2014 (MaTissE), enabling magnetic-based strategies for tissue engineering; and (ii) physical-chemistry methods at the therapy interface, reinforced by a second ERC Consolidator Grant in 2019 (NanoBioMade), focusing on extracellular-vesicle engineering. A unifying theme of her work is understanding how nanoparticle properties evolve as they perform their therapeutic functions. Appointed CNRS Research Director in 2013, Senior Director in 2018, and Exceptional Class in 2024, she has authored 220 publications (23,700 citations, h-index 79), holds 12 patents, and delivered 70+ invited lectures. She received the CNRS Silver Medal in Physics (2022) and the Chemistry Medal from the Académie des Sciences (2023).