About IRD in Cambodia

BAUDRON Paul is a hydrogeologist and research fellow at IRD's UMR G-EAU (Montpellier, France), which he joined in 2022 after 7 years as a professor in Canada.

His research focuses on understanding groundwater and surface water flows, in a context of global change and increasing anthropogenic pressure on water resources.

More specifically, he contributes to the development of simple and robust techniques to analyze interactions between surface and groundwater, exploiting information provided by environmental tracers of the water cycle.

Since September 2023, he has been assigned to the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he collaborates with researchers from the Wetlands and Coastal Research Laboratory to study the impact of human activities on hydrological systems.

BELLAFIORE Stéphane is a research director and phytopathologist at the IRD (UMR PHIM). He studies the interactions between plants and nematodes with the aim of finding alternatives to the use of chemical nematicides and thus promoting sustainable agriculture. He holds a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and an Habilitation to conduct researches delivered by the University of Montpellier (France). He has been working at the Institut de Technologie du Cambodge (ITC) since 2022, in partnership with Dr M. Suong, as part of the HealthyRice consortium.

CARUSO Domenico is a veterinary doctor and research engineer at the IRD. After more than 10 years as a veterinarian and Public Health Veterinarian (PHV), he has focused his activities on fish pathology and aquaculture since 1999, particularly in tropical countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, Ghana and Cameroon among others). In this field, he has carried out studies and expertise on the descriptive and analytical epidemiology (risk factors) of enzootic fish diseases, with the aim of providing guidelines for better sanitary management of aquaculture.
Other areas of expertise and study covered focus on the use of plants for phytotherapy, ethnobotany and fish immunology. For the IRD, he participated in and led various projects on the sustainability and ecological intensification of aquaculture, organizing an international conference on this topic in Indonesia.

HERBRETEAU Vincent is a health geographer, in charge of research at IRD's UMR 228 Espace-Dev (Space observations, models & actionable science). His research focuses on the spatial analysis of infectious diseases such as malaria, with particular emphasis on the ecological study of pathogen carriers and vectors, the exposure of human populations to these vectors and pathogens (social behavior, access to healthcare, etc.) and the risk of transmission.

JOUQUET Pascal is a research director at the Institut d'écologie et des sciences de l'environnement de Paris (UMR iEES Paris), a research unit housed at Sorbonne University (Paris, France), where he leads and manages the Ecological Functioning of Tropical and Temperate Soils (FEST) team. His research focuses on the study of ecosystem services provided by soil biodiversity, and in particular the influence of the biodiversity of "soil engineer" bioturbator species (i.e. mainly termites and earthworms) on tropical soil structure and dynamics, carbon sequestration, erosion and water dynamics and quality. This transdisciplinary research has mainly been carried out in Côte d'Ivoire (1999 to 2002), Vietnam (2007 to 2011), India (2014 to 2018) and currently at the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC), where he has been assigned since 2022.

MOULIN Lionel is a microbial ecologist of plant-bacterial interactions at IRD. He obtained a PhD in microbial ecology in 2002 from the University of Lyon (France) and his Habilitation to Conduct Research (HDR) in 2011 from the University of Montpellier (France). He worked on rhizobia from 2004 to 2014 at UMR LSTM, then from 2015 to 2020 on the Adaptation of Burkholderia to Interactions with Plants (ABIP group) in IPME laboratory (Montpellier, France). Since 2020, he is the group leader of the BRIO group at UMR PHIM. He authored more than 65 articles in rank A journals, including Nature and Science, has an Impact factor of 38 and was cited more than 6000 times. Since September 2023, he is expatriated at the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) in Phnom Penh to work on the rice microbiota and to develop nature-based solutions to control phytopathogens. Since January 2024, he is co-leading with ITC the IJL LEAD (“Laboratoire d’Excellence en co-ingénierie des Agrosystèmes Durables”, Laboratory of Excellence in Co-engineering Sustainable Agrosystems).

SLEMBROUCK Jacques is an engineer specializing in the acquisition of biological bases for improving the breeding performance of tropical freshwater fish. He has over 30 years' experience in the domestication and development of aquaculture techniques adapted to developing countries. Over the past fifteen years, the global and multidisciplinary approach to aquaculture production systems, as well as the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, have represented a major turning point in his research activities. New concepts such as sustainability and ecological intensification have led to a more integrated approach to farming systems.