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.

Micalis merges more than 370 people including 130 scientists, engineers and scientists-teachers as well as 140 PhD students, post-doctorant fellows and other students, organized in 23 research teams and 3 scientific departments. 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 connection:

• The microbial food and intestinal ecosystems and the functional interactions between food, microbiota and host
• The emergence and control of opportunist pathogen microorganisms from food origin and the adaptation of bacteria to their environments
• 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 contract 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 Université Paris-Saclay.

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

contact : accueil-micalis@jouy.inra.fr