Background

In 1982, at the end of her studies in Botanical Sciences, Annick Wilmotte came across the path of cyanobacteria a little bit by chance. ‘I went to study their diversity in Calvi, in Corsica, for my dissertation. But it was above all to do some scuba diving that I went. Over the course of time I really became fascinated by cyanobacteria. Sometimes a person’s fate is decided by so very little.’

She next familiarised herself with molecular techniques at Groningen in Holland. During her dissertation she in effect became aware of the limits of observation by microscope, which cannot always affirm that the organisms observed belong to the same family. A molecular analysis based on genetic material seems more objective to her. She then came back to Liège to work on a FNRS doctorate.

After a detour of two months in the United States to perfect molecular techniques, Annick Wilmotte carried out postdoctoral studies on the evolution of cyanobacteria for the FNRS at the University of Antwerp, before working on gene transfer in soil bacterium, at the VITO, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research at Mol.

In 1996 she returned to the University of Liège as a FNRS Research Associate. There she studies cyanobacteria at the Life Sciences Department