Dr Maxime Ardré is a physicist by training who turned to the study of bacteria. He is fascinated by these microorganisms which have a tremedous impact on both the humans and the Earth ecosystems.
Hence Maxime is involved in various research:
– he is seeking to decipher the internal mechanisms of bacteria
– he studies the forces that govern their population dynamics
– he ultimately wants to figure out the way bacteria evolve and adapt to their environment.
Being aware that one of the major issues to come is to control this unknown living matter, Maxime Ardré is particularly interested in the applications of such research in order to develop innovations.
Currently Maxime is a permanent researcher as Maître de conférences in the Laboratoire Génétique de l’Evolution at ESPCI of Paris.
Having spent his early years in the south-west of France, Maxime came to Paris to complete his higher education in fundamental physics with specialization in biophysics. His PhD was completed at Ecole Polytechnique and Université Paris-Sud (now Paris-Saclay) and concerned the dynamics of microbial biofilm formation at the water-air interface.
After his doctorate he worked with Nicolas Desprat at Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris on microcolonies of bacteria for which he developed a microfluidics system coupled to fluorescence microscopy.
Following this work Maxime got funded by the HFSP as a postdoctoral scientist at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study at Massey University in New Zealand. He was engaged in research using droplet technologies to explore fundamental properties of microbial growth. He also built projects to tackle the biophysics of microbial mats and the molecular biology of pyoverdin production and association of this molecular with cell surfaces.
In 2018 Maxime has been successfully recruited by the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielle of Paris (ESPCI) to pursue is research on bacterial behaviour using the droplet-setup and other tailor made technologies that he develops.