Emeritus Research Director
e-mail: jerome.yelnik(at)upmc.fr
I am an « Emeritus Research Director », named as such by Inserm which has used to be by my employer for 40 years. My “merit” if there is one, what I have been doing for research during these years, authorizes me to continue my activities for a few years more, as far as ICM and the NERB team will accept my presence in their premises.
I am a “Neuroanatomist”, a category of researchers which has long be an endangered species facing to the new methods of Neuroscience (electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, neurogenetics during the last century), but which has regained a certain appeal amongst the users of most recent neuroimaging techniques (MRI, fMRI, optogentics….)
I have been applying this approach to the study of the basal ganglia, at first through experimental researches in non-human primates, and then through clinical researches in patients with Parkinson’s disease and obsessive compulsive disorders.
During my career, I have acquired a kind of competency regarding animal experiment, and more specifically in non-human primates. As the sensitivity of Society evolved progressively in this domain, I have been asked to develop an ethics committee for animal experiment with the goal of monitoring the use of animals in scientific research projects. This committee has thus been developed under my presidency in order to take charge of a large geographical domain centered on the east-south part of Paris.
In 2013, the regulation has been enriched with a European Directive which oversees in a more strict fashion the use of animals for scientific purposes. I have then be again asked for becoming “chargé de mission” in the ministry of research and participate to the enforcement of this Directive in the animal research establishments of France.
In the NERB team I am thus at the same time a watchman of the good using of animal for scientific purposes, the SAPAP-3 mice among other models, and an anatomist supervisor when I am asked for this purpose.
In addition, I am a guard of the good health of the human primates of the team as I am their hygiene and security correspondent.
And, as it is also important to be in a good physical and psychic shape, I am a firm and active organizer of the Yoga activity at ICM, which provides to me the distance and pacify which are required for assuming correctly all these missions.
Finally Music! What could I be without music? Jazz here and there, at every possible opportunity, a celebration, a meeting, a congress… and let swing!