Olivier Pourquie

Dr. Olivier Pourquie received his PhD from the National Institute for Agronomy in France and his advanced training in Developmental Biology under Nicole Le Douarin at the Institut d'Embryologie du College de France at Nogent sur Marne. He was a group leader at the Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille (France) for six years and in 2002, he relocated his lab to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City (USA) where he was appointed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator in 2005. In 2009, Dr Pourquie returned to France to take the direction of the IGBMC institute in Strasbourg. He is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization and also serves as an Editor-in-Chief of Development and Current Topics in Developmental Biology. His awards include the Victor Noury Grand Prize (French Academy of Sciences); the Edouard Van Beneden Prize (Royal Academy of Belgium); and the Harland Winfield Mossman Award in Developmental Biology (the American Association of Anatomists).
Pourquie is widely recognized as an international scholar of Vertebrate Developmental Biology. His current research focuses on the formation and the development of the vertebral column and skeletal muscles. He provided the first evidence of the existence of the segmentation clock and its involvement in vertebrae formation. The Nature Publishing Group acknowledged this as one of 24 milestones in developmental biology over the past 100 years.