Among the 35 young researchers, doctoral students and post-doctoral students, IRISA is proud to have one of its doctoral students among the winners of the l'Oréal-Unesco Young Talent Award for Women in Science again this year, all from fields as diverse as medicine, biology, astronomy and computer science.

Congratulations to Elodie Germani!

Research at the frontier between medicine and computer science ...

 

Elodie Germani was still a doctoral student University of Rennes at IRISA ten days ago, working in the Empenn and Lacodam research teams. She has just defended her thesis and is now starting her post-doctorate in the laboratory of Prof. Shadi Albarqouni at the Universitätklinikum in Bonn.

Élodie is interested in brain imaging and the robustness of scientific studies. More specifically, she is looking to understand and identify the obstacles linked to the robustness of study results: why can results differ when the analysis method or data sets in a study are changed?
Today, with the rise of open science and the availability of codes and data, artificial intelligence models are trained on vast datasets with large sources of variability. However, the reliability of published results can be influenced by the flexibility of the methods used and the choices made during analysis. During her thesis, Elodie proposed solutions to the problems identified, in particular by taking advantage of data from previous studies shared by researchers, which is often little re-used, but also of good research practices to build a valid model guaranteeing the robustness of the results and thus helping to build more generalisable studies.

 

And yet nothing predestined Elodie for IT ...

After a science degree, Elodie Germani decided to study medicine. However, after four years, she realised that she wanted a field that offered more reflection and analysis in the medical environment. So she switched to a master's degree in bioinformatics, specialising in computer science and biological modelling. Top of her class, she went on to do a thesis at IRISA, supervised by two teams at the interface of her favourite fields: medical imaging (Empenn) and artificial intelligence (Lacodam).

 

 

A need for commitment to raising awareness of research careers, particularly in IT ...

 

These awareness-raising activities are exactly what I needed before my final year!

 

Before starting her thesis, Élodie worked in fields where the gender mix was relatively balanced, whether in medicine or bioinformatics. However, during the course of her doctorate, she became aware of the lack of representation of women in sciences such as computing and mathematics. This realisation led her to question her career path. ‘Gifted in science and attracted by the medical world, I naturally went into medicine, but I regretted not going to engineering school!
Why didn't she envisage studying engineering or computer science in her final year? And what did she know about research at the end of her final year? According to Elodie, nothing or very little, and she certainly had prejudices about IT, even though she was the daughter of IT parents! Encouraged by her thesis supervisors, she decided to become actively involved in promoting gender diversity in computing and the research profession, and for several years she took part in :

• Lcodent Lcréent : a course given by doctoral students to schoolgirls to introduce them to computer programming by creating an artistic work.
• Festival Pint of Science: festival aimed at popularising science and making it accessible to the general public, by organising conferences and debates in bars in France and around the world.
• J’peux pas, j’ai informatique: training for secondary school teachers to introduce them to computing and give them the tools they need to teach this subject.
• Stages d’observation: It also takes part in welcoming 3rd year trainees for observation periods.

 

If Elodie had one piece of advice for young girls, it would be ...

 

Don't limit yourself to stereotypes about training, careers or career paths! Broaden your horizons, get informed and take the time to discover the different courses and opportunities available to you. Put all the pieces of the jigsaw together before making your choice... In science, and in research in particular, there is a huge diversity of career paths, and it's definitely not a geek's world.

 

 

 

 

 

crédit photo : Richard PAK and Clémence LOSFELD