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Guillaume Fertin

Full Professor
Computer Science Department
LS2N, Nantes Université, France
ComBi group

guillaume.fertin@univ-nantes.fr

+33 2 51 12 58 24

Short CV


Research

My research is about the algorithmic study of biologically motivated problems. This implies determining, for a given problem, the border between tractable and intractable instances, in order to understand what parameters of the problem make it hard. This, in turn, allows to determine the best strategies to circumvent the intrinsic complexity of the problem, and provide solutions that offer the best trade-off between execution time and quality of the answer.

The problems I have been interested in lately are the following:

  • peptide and protein inference from MS/MS experiments
  • genomic rearrangements
  • motif search in biological networks

Publication list

Teaching

My teaching load is 192 hours per year minimum, but in reality it is closer to 240 hours.
The topics I teach are mainly algorithmically oriented (computational complexity, algorithmics and data structures, text algorithms, algorithms for comparative genomics and motif search in networks, etc.).

I essentially teach to Bachelor students ("L3" in French, meaning 3rd year after "baccalauréat") and Master students ("M1" and "M2", meaning respectively 4th and 5th year after "baccalauréat").


Admin

  • Deputy head of the ComBi (Combinatorics for Bioinformatics) group. The team leader is Damien Eveillard.
    The ComBi group is composed of 9 permanent researchers and +/-10 PhD students and postdocs.

  • Since January 2022, I am Deputy head of the CNRS "Groupe de Recherche Bio-Informatique Moléculaire" GdR BIM, led by Hélène Touzet (CRIStAL, Lille University).
    GdR BIM is funded by the Computer Science Institute (INS2I) at CNRS. It is intended to the french research community in bioinformatics, with strong computer science methodological aspects, with applications in molecular biology. Its main goals are structuring and animating this research community, as well as accompanying in the evolution of its scientific discipline.

  • Starting January 2024 till December 2028: elected member of the Conseil Scientifique d'Institut" (Insitute Scienfitic Board) for the Computer Science Institute (INS2I) at CNRS.
    As mentioned on the CNRS website, Institute Scientific Boards (or CSI in French): - advise and assist the Institute Directors through prospective advice and recommendations on the relevance and opportunity of the Institute's projects and activities - provide an opinion on areas of disagreement between the sections' recommendations and the institutes' positions, arising during a meeting between the Institute Director, CSI President, and the Presidents of the sections involved - provide an opinion on the appointment of members for admission boards concerning researchers

  • From 2017 to 2021, I was board member of the CNRS Interdiscplinary Committee CID51 « Modeling and analysis of biological data and systems: approaches through computer science, mathematics, and physics ».
    This committee is in charge of hiring, evaluating and promoting CNRS researchers.