Léa Bou Dagher

About me

Research interest

Publications

Conferences and seminars

About me

I am currently an ATER (Attachée Temporaire d'Enseignement et de Recherche) at the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 at the Electrical Engeneering and Industrial Computing department of IUT Lyon 1. My research work takes place within the Institut Camille Jordan (UMR5208).

I 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@univ-lyon1.fr or boudagher@math.univ-lyon1.fr

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.
medical images; I study how persistent homology can aid in the detection of tumors and the classification of tumor types, aiming to capture complex structural patterns that may be overlooked by traditional imaging analysis methods.

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, medical images.

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

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 Topology Seminar of EPFL, Lausanne, May 2025
Talk at the Journée des jeunes modélisateurs et modélisatrices, Lyon, March 2025
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

IUT Lyon 1

Spring 2026

Mathematical tools and software 2, BUT 1
Mathematical tools and software 4, BUT 2

Fall 2025

Mathematical tools and software 1, BUT 1

INSA Lyon

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

Scientific diffusion

Jury for the TFJM², Avignon, April 2025
Jury for the ETEAM, Lyon, July 2025
Role model in the Journée Filles maths et informatique : Une équation lumineuse, December 2025