Miroslav Radman

Professeur, Inserm
Miroslav Radman is a French-Croatian geneticist and molecular biologist. He graduated in biology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. In 1969, he received his PhD degree in molecular biology from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium. After working as a postdoctoral researcher with Raymond Devoret (1969-70) at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) at Gif-sur-Yvette, France, he joigned Matthew Meselson at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA (1970-73). He is a former Professor of Molecular Genetics at the Free University of Brussels (1973-83) and Research Director at the French CNRS (Institute J. Monod, Paris, 1983-1997). In 1998, he became professor of Cell Biology at the Medical School of the René Descartes University (Paris-5) and director of the INSERM research Unit 571 "Evolutionary and Medical Molecular Genetics", from which he retired in 2013 as exceptional class professor emeritus.

Miroslav Radman is member of several international clubs and academies. He is also the founder of the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences (MedILS) in Split, Croatia. He is the founding member of four start-up biotech companies in the USA and France, and initiator and co-founder of the EITP (European Institute of Technology in Paris) project.

During his career, he has published over 200 research and review articles in the areas of DNA repair, DNA replication, mutagenesis, genetic recombination, evolution, microbiology, cancer research, protein oxidation and aging, that have been cited over 10.000 times. Additionally, he is the author of 2 books of scientific popularization about his recent work on the field of aging.

Three of his personal discoveries are present in standard molecular biology and genetics textbooks worldwide (the SOS response in bacteria; the discovery that the mismatch repair system acts as the genetic barrier between closely related species).
His paper on the molecular basis of extreme radiation and desiccation resistance in the most robust microbe Deinococcus radiodurans in Nature unravelled a 50 years old mystery and was commented in over thousand newspaper articles and TV news worldwide.