In 2010, following Alain Prochiantz’s idea, the three institutions CNRS, Inserm and College de France decide to create the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology (CIRB). Located on the College de France site in Paris, the CIRB promotes collaboration and scientific exchanges between its 18 research teams, interested in both fundamental or applied questions in microbiology, developmental biology, neuroscience, oncology, biophysics, cancer biology or cardio-vascular physiology.
This video presents the CIRB’s daily life, illustrated through one of its member’s more personal journey.

The CIRB is a Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology created in 2009 by Alain Prochiantz and located in the Collège de France in Paris. It is composed of 18 teams interested in various themes ranging from theoretical biology, microbiology, cell and developmental biology, neurosciences to cancer biology, and cardio-vascular research. The CIRB provides an original and integrated environment to address key questions in Life Sciences. Our originality and strength reside in the association of people with different scientific culture and expertise, developing both experimental and theoretical approaches, all interested in fundamental mechanisms underlying biological processes. Recent progress in life sciences has had major impact on how we envision future research and innovation. The reductionist approach decomposing organisms into their basic elements has generated vast volumes of data at all levels of biological organizations. It is now time to position all those elements into a larger scheme gathering development, evolution and physiology. Biological systems are also increasingly seen as highly dynamic entities constantly adapting to internal (physico-chemical) and external (environmental) constraints. Understanding how biological systems operate and evolve in normal and disease conditions are among the greatest challenges in modern science. The CIRB, in the context of its associated partners from the University Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL), such as the Memolife Labex or the Convergence Q-Life Institute, precisely aims to meet these challenges. By using multiscale approaches as well as integrating different but interlinked components, our goal is to obtain a global vision of biological mechanisms at play in living organisms. The CIRB is headed by Marie-Hélène Verlhac and is supported by three Institutes, the Collège de France, the INSERM and the CNRS. Researchers in the CIRB are actively engaged in the training of students coming from PSL, Sorbonne as well as Paris Descartes Universities. The CIRB benefits from the extremely rich scientific environment of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. Recruitment of teams within the CIRB is achieved only via international calls with the objective that new teams will participate in this common effort towards interdisciplinarity to bridge the various scales of the living world.