Team members
Team leaders
Clément Léna (DR INSERM) • Contact Clément Léna
Daniela Popa (DR INSERM) • Contact Daniela Popa
Clément Léna graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in 1992, with master degrees in physics and in neurobiology. He obtained his PhD in Neuroscience and Pharmacology at University Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (Paris 6) in the laboratory of JP Changeux at the Pasteur Institute. He was then trained in massively parallel neuronal recordings in the laboratory of Matt Wilson at MIT. After being appointed as an INSERM researcher back in France, he studied the contribution of the central cholinergic and serotoninergic systems on sleep and emotional systems. In parallel he developped the study of network dynamics in the cerebellum and in associated structures. Clément Léna was appointed Research Director INSERM in 2013. Clément Léna has an HDR from the ENS; he is co-PI of the team Neurophysiolgy of Brain Circuits.
Clément Léna has been member of the national evaluation/recrutment committee of the CNRS (CoNRS section 25, Physiology), treasurer of the French Society of Neurosciences, first treasurer of the French Brain Council, member of board of directors of the ENS and is currently in the board of directors of the French College of Scholarly Societies. He is since 2016 director of the GDR NeuralNet which currently regroups more than 80 teams of integrative neurosciences.
Daniela Popa got her MD at the medical university Carol Davila in Bucarest followed by a PhD in Pharmacology at the University Paris-Descartes in the laboratory of Michel Hamon. During her PhD she studied the links between serotonin and mood disorders using serotoninergic mutant rodents and animal models of depression. She received further training in neurophysiology in vivo in the laboratory of Denis Paré at Rutgers University (NJ) studying the mechanisms of fear and fear extinction. She moved to the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) in Paris in 2009 and was appointed there as an INSERM researcher. Her initial work focused on the characterization of cerebro-cerebellar networks, and she is now also actively involved in the study of this network in normal and pathological states. Daniela Popa has an HDR from the ENS; she is co-PI of the team Neurophysiolgy of Brain Circuits. Daniela is currently an appointed member of the National Comitee of the CNRS (section Neuroscience) and co-chair of the Gordon Conference on Cerebellum.
Permanent member
Quentin Perrenoud (Junior Professor Chair in Neurosciences ENS-PSL) • Contact Quentin Perrenoud
Quentin Perrenoud graduated from University Denis Diderot (currently Paris Cité) in 2007 with a master’s degree in genetics. He pursued a PhD at the ESPCI (Paris) under the direction of Jean Rossier and Thierry Gallopin studying the diversity of GABAergic interneurons in the cerebral cortex using patch-clamp recordings, single cell RT-PCR and three-dimensional reconstructions. After his defense in 2011, he obtained funding from the Fyssen Fundation to Join Luc Gentet and Cyriel Pennartz at the university of Amsterdam where he characterized the activity of cortical interneurons during gamma activity in the visual cortex of awake mice using patch clamp recordings targeted by two-photon microscopy. In 2015, he joined the laboratory of Jessica Cardin at Yale University where he further studied the mechanisms of gamma activity in the mouse visual cortex combining patch clamp recordings, multichannel electrophysiology, optogenetics and behavior with novel analytic approaches based in the detection of unitary network events. This work was supported by a Narsad young investigator award. In 2026, he was appointed to a junior professor position at the PSL University joining the team Neurophysiology of Brain Circuits at IBENS.
Students/ Interns
Roman Ursu (postdoc)
Danila Di Domenico (postdoc)
Sarah Chevalier (postdoc)
Ahsan Ayyaz (postdoc)
Marie Sarraudy (PhD student)
Inès Bouaziz (PhD student)
Maria Añez Carmona (PhD student)
Gaspard Gillet (M2 student)
Nicolas Sousa (M2 student)