Thomas Boulin
Thomas [dot] Boulin [at] univ-lyon1 [dot] fr
- WBPerson4085
- ORCID 0000-0002-1734-1915
- Phone : +33 4 26 68 82 82
- Building : Rockefeller, 3rd floor, Wing D
Short Bio
Thomas Boulin heads the team "Molecular and cellular neurobiology of C. elegans" at the MeLiS laboratory - CNRS/INSERM/Université Lyon 1. He has worked with C. elegans for the past 25 years.
During his PhD with Oliver Hobert at Columbia University, he studied molecular and cellular mechanisms controling the formation and the maintenance of the C. elegans nervous system (Buelow, Neuron 2003). As a post-doc with Jean-Louis Bessereau at École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he developed genetic and electrophysiological strategies to study synaptic function and acetylcholine receptor modulation (Boulin, PNAS 2008 ; Boulin, Nature Neuroscience 2012).
His team is now focusing on the role played by potassium channels in the control of cellular excitability and the regulation of the cell's membrane potential. The goal of the team is to investigate the biology of these widely-conserved ion channels in their native cellular context by taking advantage of the powerful genetic tools available in C. elegans.
He has coordinated projects funded by the European Research Council (ERC Starting, 2013), AFM-Telethon, EU Horizon 2020, Fondation Maladies Rares, and Agence National pour la Recherche (ANR). Thomas Boulin is a recipient of the CNRS Bronze medal.
Thomas Boulin is also the founder and director of SEGiCel (UAR3453, Lyon), the sole IBiSA-certified national platform for CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing and transgenesis in C. elegans, which handles over 100 projects annually and has generated over 1000 CRISPR-edited lines to date.
Academic Positions & Education
- Since 2013 Group leader at MeLiS – Mechanisms in Integrated Life Sciences.
- Since 2021 Director of SEGiCel – Service d’édition génétique de Caenorhabditis elegans.
- Since 2024 Directeur de recherche at CNRS, DR2.
- 2009 - 2024 Tenured researcher at CNRS, CRCN.
- 2016 Habilitation à diriger des Recherches (HDR), Université Lyon 1.
- Since 2024 Member of FC3R Scientific Counsil
- 2020 - 2025 Member of LabEx CORTEX
- Since 2019 Scientific Council; Association Aïda, associationaida.org.
- 2016 – 2020 Scientific Advisor, CNRS UMS 3421.
- 2013 - 2019 Member of the Management Committee of COST Action BM1408.
- 2005 - 2009 Post-doctoral fellow with Jean-Louis Bessereau, École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
- 2001 - 2005 PhD with Oliver Hobert, Columbia University, HHMI, New York.
- 2000 - 2001 Masters / D.E.A. Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire du Dévelopement (BMCD), Université Paris 6.
- 1998 - 2002 Student of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS Paris).
Personal Funding & prizes
- 2007 - 2009 INSERM Junior Contract — 2007-2009
- 2005 - 2007 EMBO Long term Post-doctoral Fellowship
- 2002 - 2005 Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds PhD Fellowship
- 2014 CNRS Bronze Medal
- 2007 Prix René Descartes, Congrès Jeunes Chercheurs
- 2006 PhD Prize of the French Society of Neurosciences