Audrey Dussutour

Biography

In 2004, Audrey Dussutour obtained a PhD in ethology under the supervision of Dr. Vincent Fourcassié and Prof. Jean-Louis Deneubourg. At the time, she was studying the organization of ant traffic. She then did two post-doctorates, one at Concordia University (Canada), where she studied collective decision-making in social caterpillars, and the other at the University of Sydney (Australia), where she studied nutrition in ants and slime molds. In 2008, she obtained a position at the CNRS Centre de recherche sur la cognition animale (CRCA) to continue her research on ant behavior. Since 2015, together with Raphaël Jeanson, Jacques Gautrais and Jean-Paul Lachaud, she has created a new team at CRCA, the IVEP (Interindividual Variability Emergent Plasticity) team. Audrey is also an elected member of the CNRS Brain Cognition and Behavior commission and the Modeling Biological Systems interdisciplinary commission.

Conference: Biological immortality: fiction or reality?

Who hasn’t dreamed of finding the fountain of youth, of becoming immortal? The quest for unlimited life has captivated the minds of countless storytellers, alchemists and spiritual leaders. While we are still searching for the elixir of immortality and the philosopher’s stone, some organisms seem to have found the key to immortality. Indeed, the blob, the hydra and other equally strange organisms seem to have found a way to reset their life clocks, a secret that remains closely guarded for the time being.