team

Hélène Fournié is a medical and scientific illustrator. She began her career specializing in neuroanatomy (Dr. D. Hasboun / Pitié-Salpêtrière - O. Vallet Prize) and has been working as a freelance illustrator for over 20 years, collaborating with public and private institutions, specializing in science and medicine. For the Sanctuary project, she illustrated human embryology and anatomy and is currently working on temporal concepts applied to the living world and the history of our planet.

Roland Lehoucq is an astrophysicist at the CEA in Saclay. He is also a lecturer (Université Paris Cité, ENS Paris-Saclay, INSTN) and the author of numerous works that explore the dialogue between science and science fiction. Since 2012, he has been the president of Utopiales, the international science fiction festival in Nantes. The asteroid (31387) Lehoucq was named in his honor, recognizing his dedication to the dissemination and sharing of knowledge.

Emmanuel Pietriga has been a researcher in Computer Science at the INRIA Saclay Center for over 20 years. He is also Part-time Professor at École Polytechnique. His research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction, particularly augmented reality, data visualization, and interactive cartography. Passionate about astronomy, he worked in Chile for two years and contributed to the design of control room interfaces for the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) and CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) observatories.

Jean-Philippe Uzan is a research director at CNRS. Specialist in gravitation and cosmology, he works at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics. He was deputy director of the Institut Henri Poincaré and is an affiliated researcher at Kyoto University. He has published a number of books for the general public, including L'harmonie secrète de l'uivers (2017), Big-Bang (2018), L'importance des constantes (2020) and Une histoire populaire de l'univers (2025), and for young readers (including L'appel de l'univers in 2024).

Michael Benson is an American filmmaker and writer who lived in Ljubljana (Slovenia) until the early 1990s. He directed a documentary, Predictions of Fire (Prerokbe Ognja), with the Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) movement. He also authored a book, Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes.

Lydie Lescarmontier is a glaciologist by training, specializing in the impact of climate change on the polar ice sheets. After 15 years working in research and in a UNESCO center for climate change education, she now works as a consultant for scientific, educational and cultural projects on climate and the polar regions. In 2021, she published La Voix des Pôles with Editions Flammarion.

Associate Professor at the University of Caen / UR VERTEX 74.80, chronobiologist and physiologist specializing in extreme environments, Benoît Mauvieux studies the mechanisms of human adaptation in extreme conditions. Recently, he participated as a scientist in the Deep Time experiment, where 15 individuals were confined in a cave for 40 days to study the social influence of a group on biological clocks and their desynchronization in the absence of time cues and natural light.

Fleur Hopkins-Loféron is an art historian specializing in scientific imaginaries. She recently published Voir l’invisible. Histoire visuelle du mouvement merveilleux-scientifique. Her latest essay, Les Nouveaux fakirs, explores the fascination with eroticism and dolorism among fakirs. Her current research focuses on the dark academia subculture and antispeciesism in science fiction imaginaries.

J.-Sébastien Steyer is a paleontologist at the CNRS and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. He is also a lecturer and exhibition curator. A specialist in Pangean faunas, he travels the world in search of fossils. He has authored around a hundred scientific articles and about twenty popular science books, including the bestseller Earth Before the Dinosaurs. He regularly collaborates with artists on Science & Art projects.

Anaïs Cario is a microbiologist specialized in the study of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Research scientist at the CNRS, she is part of the "Supercritical Fluids" group at the ICMCB (Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry of Bordeaux). Her work explores the evolutionary strategies used by microorganisms to survive under extreme conditions. She is also involved in the synthesis of prebiotic molecules to identify the most favorable conditions for the origin of life.

Guillaume Monnain is a graphic facilitator and illustrator, specializing in scientific content. With a scientific background, he worked for 13 years in the pharmaceutical and biomedical industry and then 3 years in a scientific mediation association. He created his company AKENIUM in 2016, dedicated to scientific communication and popularization. He thus offers graphic solutions to promote the understanding, memorization and sharing of scientific and technical content : live drawing and modeling, scribing, sketchnoting and videoscribing.

Michelle Fournet is an acoustic ecologist specializing in marine animal communication and human impacts on marine ecosystems. Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire, she directs the Sound Science Research Collective. Her research spans on Arctic marine mammals, sub-tropical fish, and temperate invertebrates, with a specific emphasis on North Pacific humpback whales.

Franck Selsis is an astrophysicist and research director at CNRS. His research focuses primarily on the origin, evolution, and diversity of planetary atmospheres. He also studies exoplanet atmospheres, particularly using the James Webb Space Telescope, and explores planetary habitability as well as the diversity of potentially habitable climates.

French visual artist and designer, Aurélie Bordenave has supported project leaders in communication and scientific mediation to share knowledge with the broadest possible audience. She creates tailored visual and narrative designs, including stop motion, posters, and comics. Recently, she designed the comic for SVOM, a French-Chinese astrophysics project, both as an artist and an independent editor. Aurélie draws during special events as a graphic reporter: whether her drawings are projected live or shared later.

Martin Turbet is a Planetologist, researcher at the CNRS at the Laboratory of Dynamic Meteorology, and associate researcher at the Astrophysics Laboratory of Bordeaux. His work focuses on the past climates and habitability of Mars, Venus, and Earth, as well as the diversity of rocky exoplanets. He has contributed to the detection and characterization of temperate rocky exoplanets, particularly in the TRAPPIST-1 system, using the James Webb Space Telescope.

Veronica Strang is a cultural anthropologist specializing in societies' engagements with water, beliefs in water deities, and non-human rights. In 2007, she was awarded an international water prize by UNESCO, and in 2019, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Some of her key publications include "The Meaning of Water" (2004), "Water: nature and culture" (2015), and "Water Beings: from nature worship to the environmental crisis" (2023).

Hervé Cottin, astrochemist, is a professor at the University of Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC) and conducts his research at the Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA). He studies the origin and evolution of organic matter in the Solar System. He has coordinated astrochemistry experiments conducted outside the International Space Station and participated in the comet exploration mission ROSETTA as well as the Martian mission ExoMars/Rosalind Franklin.

Myrtille Hunault is an engineer from ESPCI Paris – Université PSL and holds a PhD in materials science from Sorbonne Université. An expert in the interaction between light and matter, she works as a scientist on the “MARS” light line at the SOLEIL synchrotron. Her research combines physics, chemistry, biology, and art history. In 2022, she co-created Inestimabile Vitri Decus stained-glass window, the first work of art to use synchrotron radiation.

Richard Fisher is a writer, editor, and lecturer, specializing in science, technology, and long-term thinking. He is a senior editor for Aeon magazine, an honorary professor in science communication at University College London, and contributes to The New York Times, The Observer, Vox, and New Scientist. A former journalist and managing editor at the BBC, he is the author of the non-fiction book "The Long View" (2023), which explores how we perceive time.

Alice Varoquaux, alias Lili Walix, has been working as graphic popularizer since 2018, for universities and research institutes such as the CEA and the CNRS. She put her experience as an engineer and her pencils at the service of scientific and technical popularization. She also works for publishing houses, for example by illustrating the book for the general public "Incroyable Microbiote!" published by Leduc, or youth magazines such as "Les Curionautes des sciences" published by Milan and "L'Eléphant junior" published by Scrinéo.

Creative and curious, he designs visualizations that blend analytical precision with artistic expression. In 1999, he built the computing systems for the Genome Sciences Center. Inventor of port knocking and creator of Circos and hive plots, his work has appeared in Nature, Science, Wired, and the New York Times. He teaches scientific visualization and advocates for clear, thoughtful communication of data.

Particle physicist at the CEA, she has dedicated her career to exploring the most fundamental constituents of matter. After completing a PhD focused on neutrinos, she turned her attention to more massive particles, first working on the Higgs boson at LEP, then on the Z and W bosons as part of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. She also teaches special relativity and particle physics at École Centrale, sharing her infectious enthusiasm for her field and profession.

RSA Fellow. TED Speaker. Design Lead, Startup Mentor, and Educator. Global Head of Design at Interos.ai. ex-Nokia, Microsoft, and Google. Author of 4 bestseller books. Spoke at 100+ events in 20+ countries, his talks have been watched by 3M+ people, and he has been featured in various magazines and newspapers, such as Wired, New York Times, Science, Nature, BusinessWeek, Creative Review, Fast Company, Forbes, Grafik magazine, Étapes, and El País.