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I work in the stem-cell group at L’Oréal’s advanced research laboratory just outside of Paris, managing a small team of scientists and technicians. We are looking into how stem cells are involved in the ageing process, trying to work out whether the way they behave as we get older is a cause of the symptoms of ageing or a consequence. Either way, this is something that we should eventually be able to target cosmetically.

Before I came to L’Oréal I did two postdocs – one at Purdue University in West LaFayette, Indiana, on neural stem cells and one at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, looking at dermal stem cells – how they differentiate into other cells, where they are located and how they change as we age. After working in academia for seven years I needed a change and thought that working in cosmetics would be interesting and useful in a different way to what I was used to.

In fact, working for L’Oréal is not drastically different from working at a university – the labs are amazingly well-equipped and the people are technically skilled. We design experiments, redesign them when they don’t go as expected, attend internal meetings and discuss our research with colleagues. The main difference is probably that industry is less about deciphering nature’s secrets than trying to find a way to use what is already known.

As well as working with my team, I also work closely with scientists from L’Oréal’s brands, such as Lancôme or Vichy, helping them to use our results to develop better products. I sit on PhD committees and train the master’s students that L’Oréal has taken on, so I still have to keep up with the academic mindset.

I was lucky to be working on stem cells just as they were becoming the next big thing, but that can be hard to predict when you are choosing a PhD. If you want to work for a big company like L’Oréal, it helps to have a really strong academic profile, whatever you study. You can do a PhD or master’s with L’Oréal but we also hire people with really diverse backgrounds and training who have not been through the system. There is no hard and fast rule – you just need to be good at what you do.