Frédéric Silvestre

Passionate about the animal world, I began studying biology at the University of Liège in Belgium. I graduated in Zoological Sciences in 1996 after defending a master's thesis in the Oceanology Laboratory. I then wanted to give a more applied orientation to my studies and obtained a Master's degree in Environmental Management at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where I wrote a thesis on the development of ecotourism in Antarctica. I then decided to take up an assistant post at the University of Namur, where I was able to teach animal biology while developing original research aimed at establishing a new proteomic approach to aquatic ecotoxicology, and more specifically on non-model organisms. After completing my PhD in 2005, I spent 2 years working on a collaborative scientific project with the University of CanTho, Vietnam, before being awarded an FNRS post-doctoral fellowship during which I set up collaborations with American teams. My first experience took me to the University of Louisiana Lafayette, where I worked with Prof. P. Klerks, a specialist in ecotoxicology and the adaptation of fish to pollutants. I then moved to the Golden State, California, to work at the University of California Davis on a Fulbright scholarship. There I worked with Professor D. Kültz, one of the world's leading specialists in environmental stress response and evolutionary proteomics in fish. Since 2010, I have been a professor at the University of Namur, where I founded the Laboratory of Evolutionary and Adaptive Physiology (LEAP).

My main scientific questions concern how aquatic organisms acclimatise, adapt and evolve in an environment modified by human activities. My research focuses on the mechanistic understanding of biological processes using physiological, behavioural, proteomic and epigenetic parameters. I am currently studying the delayed and transgenerational effects of stressors applied during the development of fish species such as zebrafish and mangrove rivulus. The latter species has the unique advantage of self-fertilisation, which makes it possible to obtain isogenic lines, and is a good model for studying the role of epigenetics in phenotypic plasticity.