Sakina-Dorothée AYATA

Latest news

I just obtained a Chaire de médiation scientifique at the Institut Universitaire de France, meaning that the 5 coming years (2023-2028) I will dedicate most of my time to outreach and research.

Our project TRAITZOO on "Trait biogeography and functional diversity of marine mesozooplankton from high throughput data (imaging, omics), machine learning and numerical modelling" has been selected by the French ANR funding agency. This collaborative 4-year project gathers the LOCEAN, the LOV, the LOG, the SEPIA/CEA, the LaMME, and colleagues at AWI in Germany, BIOS and Bermuda, and NeoLab/Takuvik at the Université Laval in Québec (Canada).

The new version of our project-team FORMAL, "From Observing to Modelling OceAn Life", has been selected by the ISCD of SU. This collaborative project gathers several labs from SU and beyond (LOCEAN, LOV, ISYEB, LIP6, BOREA, LPSM, LOMIC, AD2M, LJLL).

For the next four years (2023-2026), we will be recruiting 3 Master students, 3 PhD candidates, 1 assistant engineer, and 1 post-doc for TRAITZOO, and several Master students, 2 PhD candidates, and 2 post-docs for FORMAL. Please contact me if you are interested to join us!

Bio sketch

I studied biology, ecology and computer sciences at the École normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris from 2002 and 2006. I then did my PhD at the Station Biologique de Roscoff in marine ecology under the supervision of Eric Thiébaut (UPMC, Dec. 2010). I studied larval dispersal and connectivy of marine invertebrates using biophysical modeling, in situ observations, and statistical analyses. I then did my post-doc at the LOCEAN in Paris under the supervision of Marina Lévy and Olivier Bernard from INRIA, where I worked on the impact of phytoplankton stoichiometry and photoacclimation on primary production in the ocean.

In 2012 I was recruited as associate professor (maîtresse de conférences) in marine ecology at Sorbonne University (SU). I worked in the COMPLEx Team at the Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche sur mer (LOV). I passed my habilitation (HDR) in June 2017. In 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, I was a visiting researcher at ISYEB thanks to two sabbatical years at the CNRS. The aim of my sabbatical was to learn on the use of genomics and next generation sequencing for plankton studies.

Since 2020, I am co-leader of the Projet-Team FORMAL, From ObseRving to Modelling oceAn Life, of the Institut des Sciences du Calcul et des Données (ISCD) of SU.

In September 2021, I joined the LOCEAN in Paris.

In 2022, I was Invited Professor by the GRIL — Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire en limnologie et en environnement aquatique at UQAM in Montreal for 3 months (May-July 2022). I was hosted in the laboratory of Pr. Beatrix Beisner at UQAM and I have also visited the Poisot lab at UdM and Frédéric Maps at the Université Laval in Québec.