Thibaut BURG

Hello everyone, today’ presentation will be of Thibaut Burg, a.k.a TB, our pedagogy vice-president!

After getting his degree in licence, TB integrated the neuroscience master in Strasbourg. He’s currently a PhD student at the INSERM in Luc Dupuis’s lab, under Caroline Rouaux’s direction. 

When we asked him why he chose this academic path, TB answered “I’m the perfect example of the little kid that wanted to know how everything works and to become a researcher… My parents always cursed me because I harassed them with why, why, why? Life sciences came as an obvious choice. It offered all the freedom I needed and especially all the resources to quench my curiosity. I was like a fish in water. Choosing the master was hard though. I had to make a radical choice, pick a field, even though there a quite a few fields that interest me. The difficulty. But neuroscience finally seemed like the most logical choice. So much mystery surrounding the brain, still today, so many answers to find. And also, the brain controls everything, so I’m kind of studying everything? You see? I’ve always wanted to do something concrete, to serve society. So naturally, I turned towards biomedical research and for my thesis, I joined a lab working on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare neurodegenerative disease that affects the adult motor system and remains fatal and incurable today. I’m trying to make my contribution to the research effort by trying to understand the role corticospinal motor neurons could play in the initiation and development of the disease. 

The after-PhD is approaching for TB, as he is in his fourth year. His goal is to become a researcher, but he’s giving himself some time to think, given the current state of research in France. He would prefer to meditate on his decision. “It’s possible that I go crazy and go grow kiwis in New-Zealand”. 

The whole association thing wasn’t TB’s thing at first. “But then I saw that it was a big group of friends, all nice and warming, and so I wanted to be a part of it. And with Doctoneuro, I can do what I love, that is, scientific vulgarisation and sharing knowledge with the public. For me, it’s a very important mission that every researcher has to fulfill but is too often neglected. So here I am, Captain TB to the rescue !” See, we have a spot for everyone here !! 

This year, his goal in the association is to find someone to pass the VP Pedagogy torch on to, and organize a crazy event that even Disneyland couldn’t. What say you, cohesion team?

His last words “Be crazy. And like Coluche would say, the gates to the future are open to those who know how to push them”.