Fabrizio Cleri
Professeur des universités
CNU : SECTION 28 - MILIEUX DENSES ET MATERIAUX
- Laboratoire / équipe
- Composantes, facultés

Fabrizio Cleri
Professeur des universités
Présentation
After many years spent in nuclear physics and materials science, I turned to biophysics. These days, my main subject is computer simulations of DNA damage and repair at different length and time scales. I am the current leader of the IEMN Physics Division (about 45 staff, postdoc and students), and director of the Master in Biological and Medical Physics at the University of Lille. My main expertise is in statistical mechanics theory and molecular modelling, where I authored more than 140 scientific publications, and gave about 50 invited talks in national and international Conferences, with about 6,000 citations.
I was/am principal investigator or co-PI, in a number of large-scale projects combining experiments and theory. Among the most recent ones: the INSERM-funded “TWEEZ-RT” (2012-2016) experiments and theory of DNA damage under ionizing radiations; the EC-H2020 “ESC2RAD” (www.esc2rad.eu) on modelling of DNA biological damage from cosmic radiations in deep space; the ANR-funded "DYPROSOME" (https://anr.fr/Projet-ANR-21-CE45-0032, 2022-2025) on the dynamics of DNA repair proteins in the nucleosome; the i-SITE funded "SENEXIMEX" (2021-24) on radiation-induced cell senescence.
I also have a youthful passion for astrophysics (which I teach to 3rd-year physics students), and find some interest in the now-fashionable topic of quantum computing.
Check out also my science blog at physicsoflife.fr !
Molecular dynamics at T=310 K MD of the tri-nucleosome complex in ionized water. Left: the starting configuration; right: final configuration after 300 ns of MD. The DNA is in blue, histones silver, ions indicated by points.




The interrogation complex hOGG1/DNA after 500 ns of MD equilibration at T=310K in TIP3P water with 0.1M NaCl. As observed in the experimental configuration, OGG1 (color ribbons) grabs the DNA (white) containing the 8-oxoG at two distinct sites: the purple region holds the 8-oxoG and everts the whole nucleotide into extra-helical conformation (white spheres); the green region holds DNA at the distance of about one-half turn.
New paper appeared in eLife, March 2022
Check out our last paper just published in eLife, last part of M. Tomezak's PhD:
https://elifesciences.org/articles/67190
Welcome our new PhD student Parvathy!
Congratulations to Parvathy Sarma who joined our group February 2022 to work on the SENEXIMEX project, on radiation-induced cell senescence! Welcome Parvathy, we wish you a productive PhD work!