Agroecology 2 min

Charlotte Kirchhelle, winner of the EMBO Young Investigator Award

EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organisation, has recognized Charlotte Kirchhelle, INRAE research fellow in the “Plant Reproduction and Development” laboratory in Lyon (RDP), as Young Investigator in the area of plant cell and developmental biology.

Published on 03 December 2024

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The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), which promotes excellence in life sciences, helps young scientists to advance their research, enhance their international reputation and insure their mobility.

Charlotte is among 27 young group leaders in EMBO membership countries who have been selected for the EMBO Young Investigator Programme. In January 2025, she will join the international network of some 800 current and former EMBO researchers, enabling her and her team to network and develop new collaborations. As an active EMBO Young Investigator for 4 years, she will receive an award of 15,000 euros, will benefit from team leadership training, access to core facilities at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and mentoring from EMBO members. She will also be able to apply for additional grants (e.g. to organize or travel to conferences).

An international research path

During her international academic career, Charlotte Kirchhelle received several prizes and awards, before graduating in 2017 with an interdisciplinary doctorate in Biosciences at the University of Oxford. There, she continued her research in the Department of Plant Sciences and was awarded the prestigious European Research Council grant (ERC Starting grant) in 2021 for the EDGE-CAM project, which investigates the mechanisms at play at the edges of cells during plant development (1).

In the same year, she joined as an INRAE Researcher the “Mechanotransduction and Development” team led by Olivier Hamant, Research Director at INRAE at the RDP laboratory. While developing her scientific activities with four young researchers dedicated to the ERC project, she took over management of the MechanoDevo team in 2024(1).

"Since coming to France in 2021, I have enjoyed immensely the openness and collaborative spirit within the RDP unit and in the wider French research landscape, which have enriched my scientific thinking and opened new research trajectories." Charlotte Kirchhelle

Current and future research at RDP

As a leader of the MechanoDevo team at the RDP, Charlotte Kirchhelle has established close connections with other RDP teams (MOSAIC, Signal, SiCe, SeedDev), demonstrating her team is well-integrated and its agenda fits the core mission of the RDP.

Her multidisciplinary, ERC-funded research programme aims produce a multi-scale, mechanistic model of plant morphogenesis with a particular focus on the role of cell edges. The team’s main research questions, at the cell-edge level, deal with the molecular basis of signaling, the growth control mechanisms, the cell-edge polarity and the contribution of growth control to organ development.

Charlotte Kirchhelle's involvement in the EMBO network will enable her to leverage the connections as well as national and international collaborations to investigate the role of cell edges in different organisms (including moss and brown algae) and in different physiological contexts.

(1) ERC-2020-STG grant: EDGE-CAM “Edge-based mechanisms coordinating cell wall assembly during plant morphogenesis” – 1,5M€ – 2021-2026

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Valérie Samper

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RDP Research Unit - Plant Reproduction and Development

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