The next RED School will be March 15-21, 2026
Discover the school program and apply
Here’s the team of teachers in charge of this year’s courses, with whom you’ll have the opportunity to interact
microbial ecology and evolution, origin of life, major evolutionary transitions, tree of life, extremophiles, geobiology
Puri Lopez-Garcia is a biologist and Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), working at the Ecology, Systematics and Evolution unit at the University of Paris-Saclay, where she co-leads the DEEM team (Diversity, Evolution and Ecology of Microorganisms). Her research focuses on the diversity and evolution of microorganisms from all three domains of life—archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes—found in diverse, often extreme or mineral-rich ecosystems. She uses molecular tools, metagenomics, and phylogenomics to explore these topics. She has led multiple national (ANR) and European (ERC) research projects, especially on the role of symbiosis in the evolution of eukaryotes and the origin of the eukaryotic cell from prokaryotic ancestors.