Trained as a doctor, Robert Barouki manages the Toxicology, Pharmacology, and Cell Signaling unit in Paris. As an expert on the influence of the environment on health, he also participates in numerous steering and decision-making groups at the national and European level. He coordinates the French Initiative for Environmental Research (IFRES) and recently took the lead in the Health environment research agenda (HERA) European program, aimed at proposing research priorities for the next 10 to 15 years. At national level, he is preparing a report commissioned by the Ministries of Research, Health and the Environment on behalf of Inserm, as part of the preparation of the next National Health and Environment Plan.

At the beginning of his research career, Robert Barouki studied the effects of hormones. He then turned to those of dioxin and the role of adipose tissue. The latter stores the contaminants that enter the body. But over the long term, it releases them in small doses leading to harmful effects. More generally, the researcher is now interested in the exposome, i.e. everything the body is exposed to during its lifetime, via pollutants, food, stress, etc.

Read Robert Barouki's biography on the Histoire de l’Inserm website (in French)

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*Inserm unit 1124/Paris Descartes University