Miriam grew up in the south of France and became passionate about the Ocean at an early age. Being a diver since the age of twelve, she decided to move to Australia for her undergraduate studies and earn a joint degree in Marine Biology and Chemistry at James Cook University in northeastern Queensland. Being located in front of the Great Barrier Reef, her studies at James Cook University allowed her to specialize in coral biology and tropical marine ecology. Miriam discovered molecular biology during an internship in coral developmental biology at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). Her interest in symbiosis as a central element in the development of Life on Earth brought her to the Max Planck Institute in Bremen (Germany), where she did her MSc. thesis on the ecology and evolution of chemosynthetic symbioses between bacteria and marine gutless oligochaete worms.
Miriam is currently a PhD student at the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), and working in the newly launched “Pourquoi Pas les Abysses?” project. Her research focuses on developing and optimizing environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding protocols for the re-evaluation of deep-sea biodiversity. She will analyze deep-sea sediment cores collected during the R/V Falkor cruise to determine prokaryote and eukaryote diversity in the different sediment layers. On a broad-scale, her work aims to re-assess benthic deep-sea biodiversity and the biotic and abiotic factors influencing diversity dynamics.
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