Professor Janine Cossy, former doctoral student at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne has recently been elected to the Académie des Sciences.

On 5 December, chemist Janine Cossy was elected during the plenary meeting of the Académie des Sciences. She will be received on 29 May during a formal sitting under the dome of the Institut de France.

After a doctorate at the University of Reims under the supervision of Jean-Pierre Pète and a post-doctorate in Barry Trost’s team at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Janine Cossy returned to Reims, where she was appointed head of research at the CNRS in 1990. In the same year, she joined ESPCI Paris as a professor of organic chemistry, and to this day leads the Organic chemistry laboratory. Her work focuses on new methods of synthesis and the complete synthesis of biologically active natural products such as anticancer agents, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and products affecting the central nervous system.

The author of over 450 articles and 13 patents, she has received numerous distinctions, including the CNRS Silver Medal and the Académie des sciences Jungfleish prize in 1996, the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin International Lectureship in 2005 and the Le Bel prize from the Société Chimique de France (SCF) in 2009. A consultant to Rhône-Poulenc then Rhodia and L’Oréal, she also co-founded the start-ups Acanthe Biotech and CDP Innovation. Finally, from 1998 to 2006, she was vice-president then president of the organic chemistry division of the Société Chimique de France.

Janine Cossy is the second woman, after the nomination of Odile Eisenstein in 2014, to join the chemistry section of the Académie.

The Académie des sciences is a learned society, whose role is to promote scientific research. It fosters and protects the spirit of research, and contributes to the progress of science and its applications. Since its creation in 1666, the Académie des sciences has devoted itself to the development of science and advises governmental authorities in this regard. Independent and long-standing, placed under the protection of the President of the French Republic, it is one of the five Academies based at the Institut de France.

Today, the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne takes particular pride in counting Janine Cossy among its alumni.