Day 2: Visit at the Curie Institute

Today we spent some more time in the Quartier Latin, beginning at the Botanical Garden, the Jardin des Plantes.  We saw varities of all sorts of flowers in the gardens from all over world and the tropical greenhouses are magnificent.  We then went across the street to the Mosquée de Paris where we had a traditional Morocain mint tea.  There is a beautiful courtyard and nice to go for tea, lunch or dinner.

Next was a rendez-vous at the Panthéon where we met Chair of the Board of Trustees, Leslie Heaney '92 and her daughter Emmeline, who have been in Paris for ten days with their family.  We took them to the Institut Curie which is right around the corner from the Panthéon.  It was an opportunity for Sophie to see where she'll be working and gave Olivia, Leslie and Emmeline an idea about what's going on at the Curie as well.  We had a very warm welcome from Graça Raposo and Jacqueline Legras.  They introduced us to some of the scientists in the lab - most are PhD students are various stages.  We met Anand who is from India and was recently named the top student at the Curie.  Graça and the lab are very proud of him and his accomplishments!  We also met Guillaume who is in the process of writing a paper to be published.  He'll be sending me the paper and its abstract to edit in the coming days.  Most of the scientists have English as a second language, but they publish their papers in English.  I have offered to edit their English for them as a way to contribute and give back to the Curie.

Graça's lab works on exosomes -- skin pigmentation.  They have partnered with Clarins to do research which resulted in a new product called Mission Perfection, a cream that helps unify the skin's pigmentation.  I helped edit a paper they wrote that contained the research that Clarins funded and used to develop Mission Perfection.  Interestingly, when I looked at the description of the cream on the Clarins site, I noticed that the Institut Curie was not named, only a "world renowned research center".  All interesting bits of knowledge to learn and discuss with the students about how the research informs and leads to a product in this case, but no credit or mention of the Institut Curie by name.  I'm sure there's a very specific reason for that and we'll find out why!