130TH ANNIVERSARY

A look back at the OMICS opening ceremony on September 13, 2018

September 13 saw the official opening of the OMICS buildings on campus. The occasion was marked firstly by the unveiling of the names of the two buildings that form the Institut Pasteur’s new center of expertise. This was followed by a presentation of the activities undertaken in the buildings that will house outstanding multidisciplinary research teams and state-of-the-art technologies. The new center will consolidate the Institut Pasteur's position as a major global player with the capability of generating and analyzing big health data to advance our understanding of the living world and improve healthcare.

The official delegation tasked with unveiling the names of the two buildings started off in the atrium of the OMICS buildings, before signing an inaugural totem and unveiling the work by the artist ORLAN in connection with the Organoid program.

The delegation – consisting of the Institut Pasteur Board of Directors’ Chairman Christian Vigouroux, the President Stewart Cole, the Scientific Director Olivier Schwartz, the Senior Executive Vice-President Administration and Finance François Romaneix, and the Institut Pasteur ambassador Erik Orsenna, alongside the heads of the different OMICS Center units (Marc Monot, Marc Eloit, Olivier Gascuel, Vincent Enouf), members of Veil and Yersin families, and several other Institut Pasteur members – first unveiled an inaugural totem in honor of Doctor Guy Gillot and Mrs Andrée Gillot, whose generous donation helped to support the construction of the buildings. This was following by the unveiling of the name of each of the buildings comprising the center of expertise:

 

  • First the Simone Veil building, in the presence of Jean and Pierre-François Veil. This building houses the Biomics Pole, directed by Marc Monot, and the shared microbiology platform (P2M), directed by Vincent Enouf, and will soon house the Pathogen Discovery laboratory, directed by Marc Eloit.

 

  • Next the Alexandre Yersin building, celebrated in the presence of Yersin’s great niece Geneviève Minssen. This building houses several research teams from the Center of Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Integrative Biology (C3BI), together with the Bioinformatics Hub.

     

 

 

The delegation members then proceeded with signing the inaugural totem and the artist ORLAN’s work was unveiled. The work entitled "Les phages d’ORLAN" (ORLAN’s phages) presented by Olivier Schwartz and the artist herself, aims to show the porosity between art and science, and more particularly between art and biomedical research, giving prominence to certain words and involving images that researchers see through their microscopes in their daily work.

After this sequence streamed live to the CIS, the members of the official delegation took to the auditorium’s stage in turn, emphasizing the tremendous importance of the center of expertise for the Institut Pasteur in the innovative field of computational biology, and explaining, during round table discussions, the different activities undertaken by the Biomics Pole, C3BI, P2M platform and Pathogen Discovery laboratory.

 

During the ceremony, Stewart Cole declared: "This evening, we are witnessing another revolutionary moment in the history of the Institut Pasteur: the creation of the Omics Center. The data derived from this strategy will help to formulate new working hypotheses and better tackle the scientific and medical challenges facing our society."

 

The ceremony ended with vibrant and engaging speeches with anecdotes from members of Simone Veil and Alexandre Yersin’s families and with heartfelt thanks to Mr and Mrs Gillot.

 

The event closed with a drinks reception and a visit to the buildings in the OMICS Center to discover the architecture and facilities, and to meet with the teams who took pride in welcoming the groups of visitors and showing them their work.

 

 

 

Several photo exhibitions were set up throughout the buildings. The visitors also had the chance to meet with the architects from the firm in charge of the project alongside the teams from the DRTE’s Technical Department who supervised the work over the 2 years’ duration.

 

  • Review the event

 

 

 

 

  • To find out more about Big Data and the work on artificial intelligence by our Institut Pasteur researchers, see also:

 

• A video of the Institut Pasteur scientists’ research

Christophe Zimmer

Mohamed El Beheiry

Guillaume Dumas

David Bikard

 

• The latest issue of the LIP

 

Photos ©Antoine Bonnafous - Thomas Lang - Institut Pasteur

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