BAPTISTE PIQUERET
Postdoctoral researcher
Interested in the behaviour of ants and how they use their refined sense of smell, I joined the Ulrich lab in 2022 to study brood care in the clonal ants. During my PhD, I studied the learning and memory of ants, and tested if they could be used as bio-detectors of human cancer. More specifically, I trained ants to associate the volatile compounds emitted by cancer cells to a reward, and see that ants were able to discriminate cancer samples from cancer-free ones based on olfaction. I also used chemistry tools to identify the compounds.
EDUCATION & RESEARCH
2017 - 2021
University Sorbonne Paris Nord, France
PhD student with Prof. d'Ettorre and Dr. Sandoz
"Olfactory detection of human cancer by ants"
2015 - 2017
University of Tours, France
Masters degree “Behavioural Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity”
1st year MSc thesis: “Morphologic characterization of six populations of a thermophilic ant, Aphaenogaster iberica, regarding the altitude”, University of Tours, supervised by Ph.D C. Sanchez and Prof. R. Boulay
2nd year MSc thesis: “Associative learning in an ant species (Formica fusca): memory and extinction”, University Sorbonne Paris Nord, supervised by Prof P. d’Ettorre and Dr. J.-C. Sandoz
2022
University Sorbonne Paris Nord, France
Postdoctoral fellow with Prof. d'Ettorre
2012 - 2015
University of Tours, France
B.Sc. in Sciences "Integrative Evolutionary Biology"
2022 -
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology
Postdoctoral researcher