Ten years after receiv­ing the bronze medal, Anne-Vir­ginie Sal­sac, CNRS research direc­tor at BMBI, was award­ed one of the 24 CNRS 2025 sil­ver medals. This is recog­ni­tion for ‘those who con­tribute to the advance­ment of sci­ence,’ accord­ing to the CNRS.

Anne-Vir­ginie Sal­sac is one of those who indeed make sci­ence advance. This year, she is the recip­i­ent of one of the CNRS hon­orary medals, award­ed each year to research-sci­en­tists who con­tribute to the advance­ment of research and innovation.

How does the CNRS medal award process oper­ate? “No one can apply for an award. It is peers who pro­pose the names of col­leagues, researchers, in equal num­bers. Peers can be unit direc­tors or their super­vi­sors, or mem­bers of the Nation­al Com­mit­tee, an inter­nal CNRS body respon­si­ble for eval­u­at­ing the work of researchers,” she explains.

What is the sig­nif­i­cance of the bronze medal she was award­ed while as a CNRS research fel­low? “The bronze medal recog­nis­es young research-sci­en­tists whose research is well under­way and have already led to results deemed major and very promis­ing. As the CNRS points out, it is a dis­tinc­tion that aims to encour­age them to con­tin­ue on this path of research excel­lence,‘ she empha­sis­es. Today, Anne-Vir­ginie Sal­sac has gone one step bet­ter with the sil­ver medal, which, as spec­i­fied by the CNRS, “dis­tin­guish­es researchers for the orig­i­nal­i­ty, qual­i­ty and impor­tance of their work, on both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al levels ‚”

How does she feel after this award of a sil­ver medal? “I am obvi­ous­ly delight­ed, even if it makes me a lit­tle uncom­fort­able that the medal goes to one per­son, when the research involved is col­lab­o­ra­tive. In my view, this medal belongs as much to my col­leagues in the lab­o­ra­to­ry and col­lab­o­ra­tors as it does to me. What makes me hap­py, how­ev­er, is the reac­tion of peo­ple inside and out­side the lab­o­ra­to­ry who tell me how proud they are. Because yes, the medal belongs to them too.” This dis­tinc­tion is also a source of pride for UTC, fol­low­ing Cécile Legal­lais’ bronze medal for UTC-BMBI in 2003 and Bernadette Tse Sum Bui’s crys­tal medal in 2017 for UTC-GEC.

Anne-Vir­ginie con­cludes: “What final­ly pleas­es me most is that the medal high­lights flu­id bio­me­chan­ics and bio­me­chan­ics in gen­er­al. It proves that at the inter­faces between sev­er­al dis­ci­plines, we can advance fun­da­men­tal research and com­bine it with high­ly applied aspects.”

MSD