Question: What was your education like?

Iroise Dumontheil answered on 9 Nov 2016:

I am French and my education is a bit more complicated than what would have happened in the English system.
But to summarise, I had a major in science in high school, but I still studied English, Russian, History, Geography, Philosophy, in addition to Maths, Biology, Geology, Physics and Chemistry. So it was quite a broad training.
Then I did two years of something called “preparatory classes” in Lyon, again with a major in science, but again I still had languages then, and all the sciences were covered. This prepared me to take an exam for competitive entry to different types of colleges. I got into one in the suburb of Paris, and studied Biological sciences and biochemical engineering there for a year, then I did Erasmus (the European exchange program that enables students to spend 6 months or a year in another university) in London at Imperial College, doing the third year of the Biological sciences degree.
Then I went back to Paris to do a MSc in Cognitive Sciences, and then did a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in London, with French funding.
So it’s all pretty complicated, I had quite a broad education and I moved around quite a lot and gradually found the topic of science I was most interested in.