Angela Falciatore is Research Director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Director of the Research Unit “Chloroplast Biology and Light sensing in Microalgae” at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique (IBPC) in Paris. Angela investigates the mechanisms by which light impacts the life of phytoplankton in the oceans. Her interest for marine biology and photobiology stems from the research performed at the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn of Naples (SZN) in Italy, where she obtained a PhD in 2002, by performing pioneering research on the perception of environmental signals in marine diatoms. Particularly interested in the dynamic responses of photosynthetic organisms to light, she conducted post-doctoral research on the chloroplast-to-nucleus retrograde signalling in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.  Other activities at the Okazaki National Institute for Basic Biology, Japan (1997), and at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford University, USA (2003), contributed to enlarge her expertise in photobiology. In 2005, she started an independent research activity at the SZN, Italy. At the end of 2009, she got a permanent position from CNRS and moved her activity to France, first at Sorbonne Université and, since 2019, at the IBPC.

Her laboratory is dedicated to the study of light-driven processes (photosynthesis and photoperception) and chloroplast biology. Combining physiological, biophysical, biochemical, and genome-wide molecular approaches in marine diatoms, her team has characterized diversified photoreceptors, fostering novel hypotheses on the role of these sensors in controlling growth and adaptive responses in a marine context. She also uncovered the existence of a long-foreseen diatom circadian clock, which controls essential rhythmic processes in these algae. Her team is also contributing to disclose some of the diatom-specific photoacclimation properties, by identifying critical regulators of photosynthesis that also influence the natural variability of photo responses.

Angela has received a number of awards including the ‘Career Development Award, Human Frontier Science Program Org. (HFSP) in 2006; the “Coups d’Élan” Prize for French Research- Fondation Bettencourt Schueller in 2018; the Prize “Laureata Illustre” University Federico II of Naples, Italy in 2019; The Prix des Sciences de la Mer – Marine Science Award, Académie Des Sciences, l'Institut de France in 2021. She has been elected member of the European Molecular Biology Org. (EMBO) in 2023.