David Holcman

Press coverage

To celebrate the first winners of the European Research Council (ERC) in 2007, an international meeting was organized in Paris, so that they could discuss their vision and research plan for the future. In 2011, mathematical modeling was at a turning point as it was becoming predictive for molecular and cellular processes: this moment was summarized in an interview with the CNRS journal. The notion of time for living organisms can be defined as the first time the shortest telomere reaches a minimal threshold value: it is a random variable, controlled by the extreme statistics associated with telomere dynamics. "How cells are counting time?": this work was popularized in a viewpoint article in 2013: The Life and Death of Cells. The discovery reported in 2014, that astrocytes could invade the synaptic cleft under some specific conditions was recognized as a key result for controlling synaptic function. The work on computing the time for spermatozoa to reach an egg in the uterus received the Pineapple Science Award (Math Prize), the Chinese equivalent of the Ig Nobel Prize in 2018.

The novel nanoscale molecular organization underlying calcium dynamics in synapses, revealed by combining multidisciplinary approaches (live cell imaging, modeling, simulation, super-resolution) and published in 2021 brought novel concepts to the basis of memory and memory architecture. From 2019 to 2022, the work on Electro-encephalogram (EEG) analysis led to several applications to better monitor and control anesthesia doses, popularized in "Pour La science". In 2022, the adaptative algorithm to predict the sensitivity to general anesthesia developed by Holcman's group gained interest from the national French newspaper Le Monde. In 2025, the Proof-of-concept grant from ERC has been attributed to 5 French researchers hosted by the CNRS.