Born and bred in Paris, Irene left the big city in 2010 for greener pastures and an attempt at an academic career. After graduating from a M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Strasbourg (France) in 2013 and a PhD in Chemical Biology from the University of Leeds (U.K.) in 2017, she realised research wasn’t her thing. She moved on to join Driad, a consultancy supporting innovative and deep-tech start-ups in accessing public funding – where she first encountered European Projects. After almost 2 years, she moved back to Strasbourg and carried on as a freelancer, working in collaboration with French and British consultancies. At the end of 2020, Irene returned to academia by joining the ITN Consortium \"CHAIR\" as the Project Manager. She’s now part-time project manager, part-time consultant, and part-time dog-mum.