Léa Bou Dagher

About me

I am currently an ATER (Attachée Temporaire d'Enseignement et de Recherche) at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées in Lyon at the Biotechnology and Bioinformatics department. My work takes place within the Microbiology, Adaptation, and Pathogenesis laboratory (UMR5240), as part of the Microbiology of Extreme Environments team.

I recently earned my PhD in Mathematics from the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and the Lebanese University, under the supervision of Philippe Malbos, Céline Brochier-Armanet, Fida El Chami, and Kenji Iohara. During my doctoral studies, I conducted research at the Institut Camille Jordan (UMR5208) and the Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biology Evolutive (UMR5888).

Email: lea.bou-dagher@insa-lyon.fr or lea_boudagher@outlook.com

Office: Bâtiment Louis Pasteur, 3rd floor

Three-dimensional structure of the Malate dehydrogenase protein from the organism Methanocaldococcus jannaschii (https://www.rcsb.org/structure/1HYG)

Research interest

The focus of my research is to develop methods from Topological Data Analysis, particularly Persistent Homology to study the three-dimensional structure of proteins. I am interested in analyzing these structures and their geometric variations resulting from organism evolution or adaptive processes related to environmental constraints.

My work is interdisciplinary and combines applied algebraic topology (persistent homology), spectral geometry, machine learning, as well as evolutionary biology, molecular phylogeny, and structural biology.

Key words. Topological data analysis, persistent homology, protein structure, evolution, adaptation.

Publications

Léa Bou Dagher, Dominique Madern, Philippe Malbos, Céline Brochier-Armanet, Persistent homology reveals strong phylogenetic signal in 3D protein structures, PNAS Nexus, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2024, pgae158, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae158
Léa Bou Dagher, Dominique Madern, Philippe Malbos, Céline Brochier-Armanet, Faithful interpretation of protein structures through weighted persistent homology improves evolutionary distance estimation, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2025;, msae271, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msae271

Conferences and seminars

Talk at the Tassili Sunday Maths Seminar (TSMS), France, December 2024
Talk at the Young Researcher Seminar, France, November 2024
Talk at the Journée Scientifique de l'Ecole Doctoral InfoMaths, Lyon, June 2024
Talk at the EMBO Workshop: Molecular Biology of Archaea, Palaiseau, June 2024
Talk at the Bioinformatics, phylogeny, and genomics team meating, Lyon May 2024
Talk at the PhD seminar of ICJ and UMPA, Lyon, June 2023
Talk at the Séminaire de la détente mathématique, ENS of Lyon, February 2023
Talk at the Alphy & AIEM Conference, Grenoble, January 2023
Co-organization of the weekly working group Biohomology
Co-organization of a conference on representation theory, Lyon, June 2023

Teaching

Spring 2025

Stochastic processes, 4th year Bioinformatics and Modeling Department
Linear algebra, 3rd year Bioinformatics and Modeling Department
Advanced ordinary differential equations, 3rd year Bioinformatics and Modeling Department

Fall 2024

Difference equations and partial differential equations, 4th year Bioinformatics and Modeling Department
Modeling biological dynamics with ordinary differential equations, 3rd year Bioinformatics and Modeling Department
Mathematics refresher course, 3rd year Bioinformatics and Modeling Department