After 10 years as an assistant professor in Tours University working on transcription factors for metabolic engineering, I joined in 2004 the University of Montpellier as a professor where my main current research topics concern the discovery of gene regulatory networks involved in root development and stress resistance in rice. In 2011-2014 I have moved to Vietnam where I managed the department of Biotechnology/Pharmacology of the University of Science and Technology of Hanoi and the International Joint Laboratory on "Rice Functional Genomics and Plant Biotechnology" (LMI RICE). Since 2015 I am back in France where I joined the "Cereal Root Systems" (CERES) team that I led until 2025 in the Research Unit DIADE in Montpellier.