MICALIS INSTITUTE

The Micalis Institute is a mixed research unit associating INRAE, AgroParisTech and Université Paris-Saclay.

Its mission is to develop innovative research in the field of microbiology of food for health.

The Micalis Institute merges more than 340 people including 130 scientists, engineers and scientists-teachers, 70 scientific or administrative assistants as well as 140 PhD students, post-doctorant fellows and other students, organized in 21 research teams and 3 thematic axes. The Micalis Institute also hosts 2 technological platforms and a gnotobiotic animal facility. In addition, Micalis is also closely associated to the pre-industrial functional and quantitative metagenomics demonstrator Metagenopolis.

The three thematic axes correspond to three research priority areas in close connexion:

• The emergence and control of opportunist pathogen microorganisms from food origin and the adaptation of bacteria to their environments
• The microbial food and intestinal ecosystems and the functional interactions between food, microbiota and host
• The synthetic and systemic biology

The Micalis Institute was created on  January 1^st, 2010 by merging 8 food microbiology INRA laboratories located in the Ile-de-France region.

A real estate project funded in the framework of a contact between the region and the French government was unveiled in September 2014. The new building allowed the reunification of all the Micalis teams on the same INRAE campus at Jouy-en-Josas.

The Micalis Institute depends on two INRAE divisions: MICA (Microbiology and Food Chain) and AlimH (Human Nutrition), as well as on two AgroParisTech divisions: SVS (Life Sciences) and SPAB (Food Processes and Bioproducts) and finally on the SDV (Life Sciences) division from Paris-Saclay University.

The Micalis Institute is currently headed by Philippe Noirot, assisted by 5 deputy directors: Romain Briandet, Rut Carballido-López, Philippe Langella, Vincent Juillard, and Catherine Gautier.

contact :  jj-micalis-accueil@inrae.fr