Rate My Professor Julien Vermot

Julien Vermot is the Principal Investigator and Professor in Developmental Biomechanochemical Signalling, leading the Vermot Lab in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London since 2019. His research centers on the impact of mechanical stresses, particularly hemodynamic forces from blood flow, on morphogenetic processes and tissue regeneration in embryonic development. Vermot earned his PhD in developmental biology from the University of Strasbourg in 2003, with a thesis examining the role of retinoic acid in embryonic development, including heart morphogenesis, hindbrain patterning, somitogenesis, and left-right asymmetry. Following his doctoral work, he served as a visiting scientist at the Stowers Institute for Biomedical Research in Kansas City, USA, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where he developed advanced imaging techniques such as light-sheet microscopy to measure mechanical forces in living embryos.

Prior to Imperial College, Vermot was Research Director at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology (IGBMC). His prolific publication record includes highly cited papers such as "Embryonic retinoic acid synthesis is essential for heart morphogenesis in the mouse" (Development, 2001), "Retinoic acid synthesis and hindbrain patterning in the mouse embryo" (Development, 2000), "Reversing Blood Flows Act through klf2a to Ensure Normal Valvulogenesis in the Developing Heart" (PLoS Biology, 2009), "Retinoic acid coordinates somitogenesis and left-right patterning in vertebrate embryos" (Nature, 2005), "Blood flow forces in shaping the vascular system: a focus on endothelial cell behavior" (Frontiers in Physiology, 2020), and "Endothelial cilia mediate low flow sensing during zebrafish vascular development" (Cell Reports, 2014). These contributions have profoundly influenced the fields of mechanobiology and vascular development, demonstrating how flow-induced forces regulate endothelial cell polarization, migration, and tissue patterning. Vermot has received prestigious awards including the Human Frontier Science Program Career Development Award, the European Research Council Consolidator Grant, and was elected to EMBO in 2023.