Thomas Gaillard

Curriculum Vitæ

Assistant Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique

Ph.D. in chemistry

Former student of the École Polytechnique (X2000)

Engineer of the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris

General

Born on 14 February 1980 in Strasbourg, France
French nationality

Formation and qualifications

2008 French qualification to assistant professor functions, in chemistry and molecular biology (sections 31, 32, and 64).
2004 - 2007 Ph.D. in chemistry, Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France.
2003 - 2004 M.Sc. in organic chemistry, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France.
2003 - 2004 École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris.
2000 - 2004 École Polytechnique (X2000).
1998 - 2000 Scientific preparatory classes, Lycée du Parc, Lyon, France.
1998 Baccalaureate.

Professional experience

Research

2009 - present Assistant professor at the École Polytechnique,
Laboratoire de Biologie Structurale de la Cellule.
Computational protein design.
2008 - 2009 Postdoctoral stay at Rutgers University, BioMaPS Institute for Quantitative Biology.
Evaluation of DNA simulation models.
principal investigator: Dr David Case
2007 - 2008 Acting assistant professor (ATER) at Université Louis Pasteur,
Laboratoire de Biophysicochimie Moléculaire.
Far infrared spectra of amino acids.
principal investigators: Dr Roland Stote and Pr Petra Hellwig
2004 - 2007 Ph.D. at Université Louis Pasteur, Laboratoire de Biophysicochimie Moléculaire.
In silico study of allostery and large-scale conformational changes in integrins.
supervisors: Dr Roland Stote and Dr Annick Dejaegere
2004 M.Sc. in organic chemistry at Université Paris 6, Laboratoire de Chimie Organique.
Pseudo-domino reaction: allylic alkylation - metathesis.
supervisors: Dr Guillaume Prestat, Dr David Madec, Pr Giovanni Poli
2003 Research internship at Eli Lilly, Windlesham research center, England.
Organic synthesis in a “hit to lead” project.
supervisor: Dr Nick Camp

Teaching

2009 - present Assistant professor at the École Polytechnique
Department of Biology: 192h/year
  • Lecture/tutorial/practical of structural bioinformatics (Master 2nd year),
    Master Biology and Health (X),
    Master Engineering and Chemistry of Biomolecules (Paris-Saclay),
    Master Bioinformatics and Biostatistics (Paris-Saclay)
  • Lecture/tutorial of synthetic biology (Master 2nd year),
    Master Biology and Health (X)
  • Lecture/tutorial/practical of computational biology (Master 1st year)
  • Projects in bioinformatics (Master 1st year)
  • Experimental module in synthetic biology (X 2nd year)
2007 - 2008 Acting assistant professor at Université Louis Pasteur
Department of Chemistry and department of Life Sciences: 96h
  • Lecture/tutorial of informatics (Licence 1st year)
  • Tutorial of chemical reactivity (Licence 2nd year)
  • Tutorial of chemistry for the life sciences (Licence 1st year)
  • Tutorial of biological chemistry (Licence 3rd year)
2004 - 2007 Lecturer (initiation in higher education teaching) at Université Louis Pasteur
Department of Chemistry and department of Life Sciences: 192h
  • Tutorial of chemical reactivity (Licence 1st and 2nd years)
  • Tutorial of chemistry for the life sciences (Licence 1st year)
  • Tutorial of biological chemistry (Licence 3rd year)
  • Practical of organic chemistry (Licence 3rd year)
Training and collective projects: 20 days

Supervision

2025-2027 Postdoctoral researcher, 18 months, coming
2024-2025 X 3rd year (M1), 6 months, Antoine Foucher
2024-2025 X 3rd year (M1), 6 months, Violette Gontran
2023-2024 X 2nd year (L3), 6 months, Violette Gontran
2023-2024 X 3rd year (M1), 6 months, Tristan Hacquard
2023 M1, 2 months, Lucas Aubert, master "bio-informatique", Aix-Marseille
2022 X 3rd year (M1), 3 months, Yifei Wang
2022 X 3rd year (M1), 2 months, Yifei Wang
2021 Bachelor of X 1st year (L1), 2 months, Yi-Yao Tan
2020-2022 PhD, 2 years, Paula Mihaljevic-Juric
2020 M2, 6 months, Emma Goulard de Lacam, master "In Silico Drug Design", Paris 7
2018 M2, 6 months, Rojo Rakotoharisoa, master "In Silico Drug Design", Paris 7
2017 9th grade internship, 1 week, Élodie Zhou, collège Iqbal Masih
2017 X 3rd year (M1), 2 months, Babak Dalili
2015 M2, 6 months, Claire Malherbe, master "Bioinformatique et Biologie des Systèmes", Toulouse
2014 M1, 3 months, Sabrina Davidas, master "In Silico Drug Design", Paris 7
2013 M1, 3 months, Nicolas Panel, master "Biologie-Informatique", Paris 7

Responsibilities

2025 - 2029 Partner of the PEPR B-BEST BioFUMAC project
2024 - present Member of thesis monitoring committee
2017 - present Member of the collegial student monitoring committee of the École Polytechnique
2013 - present Expert for french National Research Agency (ANR JCJC), Alliance Sorbonne Université (AAP Émergence), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Research Council)
2013 - 2021 Member of the jury of the Master 1 Biology-Informatics of Paris 7 internships
2012 - 2016 Participation to the ANR ProtiCAD project (ANR-12-MONU-0015)
2010 - present Reviewer for Nucleic Acids Research, Current Opinion in Structural Biology, Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, Bioinformatics, Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, Biology Direct, Journal of Computational Chemistry, Journal of Computational Biophysics and Chemistry, and BMC Bioinformatics

Others

2002 Work experience of 2 months at L'Oréal, in Vienna, Austria
2000 - 2001 Internship of 9 months in the French Navy
Commissioned officer on a minesweeper
Bronze medal of the Défense Nationale, “Bâtiments de Combat” clasp

Technical skills

Languages French: native
English: fluent
German: occasional
Italian: basic
Computing Molecular mechanics and dynamics: AMBER, CHARMM, NAMD, XPLOR, MMTK, Tinker
Structure prediction: Modeller, AlphaFold, RoseTTAFold
Molecular docking: AutoDock, Vina
Protein design: Proteus, Rosetta, ProteinMPNN, RFdiffusion
Molecular visualization: PyMOL, VMD
Sequence analysis: BLAST, Clustal, MUSCLE, HMMER
Quantum chemistry: GAUSSIAN, CASTEP, Psi4
Languages: C, Fortran, Java, Perl, Python, shell script, LaTeX, (x)HTML, CSS
System: GNU/Linux, system administration, networks, servers, resource manager

Publications and communications