Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Lyon (http://www.ens-lyon.fr) is a world-class academic institute of excellence in higher education and research, and was ranked 5th of the World's best small universities (THE, 2018). Students of ENSL are recruited by highly competitive examination (with a less than 4% of acceptance rate) and are offered courses of the highest level. 12% of our students are international students. More than 700 professors and researchers from literature to quantum physics, in 30 research structures and high-tech equipment, and 13 scientific and technical platforms perform cutting edge research at the ENSL. Expertise and research foci of the institution are based on strong disciplinary competence (around 1100 publications/year in Humanities, Letters, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, Biology and Chemistry), interdisciplinary and international cooperation (262 exchange partnerships with 26 countries) as well as partnerships with national research organizations (CNRS, INRA, INSERM, INRIA, Universities). ENSL supplies its laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment and facilities and provides support services to researchers in their initiative (Innovation and Technology Transfer Office, Office of International Affairs), provides administrative and language resources for visiting students, postdocs and faculty members, and manages national, European and international funding and administers a Research Fund, to finance high-level scientific projects.

The research team is located at the Institute of Functional Genomics of Lyon (IGFL) (head of the Institute: Dr François Leulier), a research unit of the ENSL, Department of Biology. It comprises approx. 100 members, including recipients of international and national distinctions and 2 running ERC and 2 H2020 grants, up to 10 running ANR (French Research Agency) grants. The IGFL is interested in functional genomics, but its originality comes from bringing together, under one roof, leading scientists from different backgrounds. This makes a unique scientific environment where teams address basic research questions at the interfaces of evolution, physiology and development, using functional genomics, bioinformatics, genetics and comparative approaches. The main focus is integrative, organism-level research on animals, and the institute houses a diversity of conventional and emerging model organisms. The environment fosters rich intellectual exchanges and collaborations, supported by excellent platforms on campus.