 Here we are at the FEMS summer school for postdocs, would you mind introducing yourself and just telling me about the institution that you work in? So my name is Julia, I work in Paris at the Pasteur Institute in a unit that is filled with geneticists and actually I was hired in that unit to bring a different approach on the same topic, which is the evolvability to antibiotic resistance and to environmental stresses. The lab led by Dieter Mazel is mostly focusing on genetic stability and maintenance and all the diversity that contributes to bacterial adaptation, but also on bacterial evolution of antibiotic resistance. And I'm bringing a slightly different approach, which is a combination of microscopy and microfluidic to actually look at the cell behaviour at the cellular level and also at the population, the whole population dynamics. Have you found the experience then of the summer school in relation to your research as well? So this summer school is totally focused on a topic that I've been studying for now since my PhD, I always worked on the perfect adaptation to stress of bacteria mostly antibiotic driven and I actually explored the question at various level of the cell organisation. PhD was mostly focused on the molecular and then I moved during my postdoc in the US on cellular level and population and now I'm exposed again here at the summer school with the more molecular aspect of the bacterial evolvability. So it's great for me to catch up with the novelties in the field and I'm super happy to be here and speakers and also the audience is just lovely and perfect. Have you found lots of crossover between your research and their research or was it in like to work with all these different scientists? Some of the postdocs I think they relate on my research because there's always like one filamentation form for instance that is induced by antibiotic treatments that are happening in their project and they were curious about that because I spoke about cell shape changes when you treat with antibiotics and many students actually were interested about that and then in the second talk I gave it was more about the membrane vesicles that are highly produced during antibiotic treatment and also I had a chance to discuss with some of the postdocs that they were also interested in the content of the vesicles that they could find or their bug that they're working on is also producing vesicles and there's always a little connection that we can make even though this is not their topic I think that's the way it works you're learning from the talks of other speakers. The idea is that the mentors are giving ideas to the students in a way but have you felt anything coming back the other way? Oh yeah absolutely yeah I got many questions and I was a little frustrated at the end of the talk it was super active and super interactive sorry and actually I really enjoyed the format of like being interrupt every time they had a question because if you wait in the end of the talk then you forget so it was very rich to have it in this format so that the students and the postdocs would just interrupt anytime something would come to their mind and I was super open to it and a little bit frustrated that I couldn't actually take note of the question because I thought oh that's a good point I haven't thought about that but I will look I will look it up this worked very well. The environment here has been quite relaxed and informal all week is that right? Absolutely yes so and I think because it's so relaxed it actually allows this kind of interaction they're not shy to ask questions when they need to and it makes it very enjoyable. Is there anything that you're going to take back to your research after this week that you immediately want to start working on or anything that's like piqued your interest in a new idea? I don't think I will start a new project based on what I learned here but these are definitely many many ideas that I pulled in my mind and that I will definitely consider also maybe strengthening some collaboration that already started with some of the mentors here so it just yeah it's going to spiral up and So did you know all the other mentors before or just a few I mean have you made deeper connections with them as well? Not all of them so that's a good point actually I think out of them I knew from conferences and and one of them is a colleague of mine where we collaborate so I met them yeah conferences also related to bacterial evolvability because in the end when you think about that it's a small world so we always happen to meet but I was actually very glad to meet new people like Laurence and even Miro I didn't get a chance to actually meet him very well I met him like a while ago but I was still a student and I mean you gain maturity and then you understand better yeah just like I think I also evolved and I maybe understood better things or the way maybe he would enroll the hypothesis he had on his research because his conceptual level is so high and so advanced the way he looks at all of these different I don't know even like RNA mechanisms or any of the stuff he's presented I've seen in the past has always just been fascinating no I think he's lucky I mean to be able to zoom out on a problem and then like bring different perspectives I would love to have his knowledge and just think of a problem the way he thinks about so if you know a young postdoc is watching us in this video what would you say they would get out of this summer school if they haven't been before I would tell them that you learn a lot because the environment is very prone to interactions and questions and and the idea is really to brainstorm about a topic it's not like I'm going to show you my research and then you swallow it and then this is it it's always open questions in the field and I think we are inviting the students to think about the field from different angles in different approaches with always open questions and we try to raise those questions so it invites the students or the postdoc to discussions right and maybe they can also relate their own project to the question that we are raising awesome well thanks a lot for your time it's fascinating to chat and yeah I hope that anyone watching this is inspired to come and join another summer school with mentors like yourself yeah thank you thanks a lot