The next one I really would like to discuss is a paper that was very much [aligned] with this idea of pushing the boundaries of what we knew about the immune system and the microbiota. We had discovered before then [that] the gut microbiota was influencing the immune system, but this specific paper, I'm very, very attached to it because it first came as the idea of a student, and I love that. It was this really remarkable student, Shruti Naik, who today is a very famous scientist in her own right, who came to my laboratory and she was very passionate about trying to understand how the skin provide control on the immune system.

Not just the gut. That had never been done before. And I love this story because it's the story of the students, these brave students coming with a crazy idea and really developing the tools and the knowledge and the collaboration to [do] something [that had] never been done before. So, I'm very attached to this paper because I think [it is] the first one that really demonstrates beautifully how the skin microbiome is actually influencing local immunity and the mechanism of it, but as I say I love it because it's the story of brave students that has opened the door of a new field and for me means something very specific about this journey of this student.

This one was published in 2012. It was in Science.

Yasmine Belkaid is a renowned scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between microbes and the immune system. She is the President as well as the head of the Metaorganism laboratory at the Institut Pasteur.

Belkaid earned her Master’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene in Algiers, and a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) from Paris-Sud University. In 1996, she earned her PhD in immunology from the Institut Pasteur, where she studied innate immune responses to leishmania infection. Belkaid then moved to the United States for a postdoctoral fellowship in intracellular parasite biology at NIAID’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases (NIH).

Belkaid has received numerous awards including the Robert Koch Prize, the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur Prize, and the AAI Excellence in Mentoring Award. She also serves on the committees of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the Microbiome Technical Advisory Group at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH Anti-Racism Steering Committee, the American Society of Microbiology, and the Genentech Scientific Resource Board.