Léa Dubois and Marion Zannese are awarded the 2024 L’Oréal-UNESCO French Young Talents Prize

Léa Dubois is a doctor from Institut d’Optique Graduate School – Université Paris-Saclay. She obtained her PhD at the Charles Fabry Laboratory (LCF – Univ. Paris-Saclay/IOGS/CNRS), supervised by Isabelle Bouchoule, CNRS research director.

Ever since she was a child, Léa Dubois has been passionate about understanding physical phenomena on microscopic and macroscopic scales, and is committed to her field, quantic physics, focusing on the study of ultracold quantum gases. She aims to understand how these gases react in an entirely constructed environment, restricting them to a single line to disrupt them and observe how they move. Unmasking the secrets of these gases could help to revolutionise the field of electronics, as their behaviour is similar to that of electrons in conductive materials.

Léa Dubois is also committed to promoting the role of women in science. As a member of the Women and Physics commission of the French Physical Society, Léa Dubois recognises the importance of proving that scientific careers are not just for men to encourage girls to choose science.

 

Marion Zannese is a PhD candidate in the Astrophysics of Interstellar Matter team at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS – Univ. Paris-Saclay/CNRS), supervised by Emilie Habart, astrophysicist and lecturer at Université Paris-Saclay.

Marion Zannese has been interested in science from a very young age, particularly physics and chemistry. In the end, it was astrophysics that made her want to become a researcher. Driven by a desire to understand the universe, Marion Zannese focuses her work on the study of stars and planets. A graduate from ENS Paris-Saclay, Université de la Sorbonne and the Observatoire de Paris, with an aggregation in Physics and Chemistry, Marion Zannese is currently undertaking her PhD thesis at the Institut d’astrophysique spatiale on the analysis of star and planet-forming regions with the James Webb Space Telescope.

The L'Oréal-UNESCO 2024 French Young Talents Prize “For Women in Science” are part of a global approach aimed at reducing the gender gap in scientific fields. Each year, they reward brilliant PhD candidates and post-doctoral researchers at a key moment in the scientific career. The awards are designed to promote promising young women researchers, who embody French scientific excellence and, through their research, are committed to bringing to light new knowledge for a fairer and more sustainable future.