Bernard Malfroy-Camine

There are three main periods in life. During their early years, humans mostly learn. Then, for most of their lives, they put into practice what they have learned. Finally, during the later years of life, which can fortunately last a long time, they transmit their knowledge and experiences. Of course, these three main periods overlap: one never stops learning, one continues until the end to put into practice certain things one has learned, and, from a young age, one has things to teach others, to transmit. But still, this division into three main periods does reflect reality. Personally, I find that talking about years - if not decades - of learning, putting into practice, and transmitting, although much less poetic, is much less nostalgic - and less cliché - than talking about spring, summer, and autumn. The autumn of life is a bit sad because after autumn, we know well what comes next... I am now well in the transmission phase. I am not sure that what I have to transmit has much value but in any case, I'm having fun... It's true, recently I discovered the very special pleasures of writing, this privileged vehicle for transmission. Above all, I am a Researcher. I have always loved the fundamentally dialectical process of Research: observation, question, hypothesis, elaboration of an experimental protocol, experimentation, analysis of results, and either back to the "hypothesis" stage in case of negative, ambiguous, or unexpected results, or progress in understanding the object of study and most of the time new question, etc. I won't elaborate further; I could write much more on this subject that fascinates me. My original research field, Neurobiology, is immense, full of surprises, and offers someone curious like me the distant - and very optimistic if not naive - possibility of understanding how our brain works. I flourished in it. As my work progressed, my research interests diversified into other fields of biology, as evidenced by some of my publications on topics as diverse as certain cardiovascular or autoimmune diseases, up to fundamental aging processes. The nature of research dynamics is such that sometimes you find things you didn't expect... You have to be able to recognize them... Perhaps for this reason, from Researcher, little by little, I moved to Researcher-Entrepreneur. In my research field, biology, one is never far from practical applications and, logically, being, I admit, fiercely independent, I wanted to pursue the eventual exploitation of my discoveries myself. So, quite early in my career, I founded a Biotech company, Eukarion. Then I helped other entrepreneurs pursue their dreams by being a member of the Boards of Directors of the companies they founded, or simply by giving them advice. In this regard, I rarely told them what to do, I almost always contented myself with telling them the opposite, namely what not to do: in my life as an entrepreneur, I made mistakes, stupid things, not to say crazy choices... inevitably... So, I try to prevent others from making the same ones... Today, I must say that my activities as a Biotech entrepreneur have considerably diminished. If, until the end, I will fight for a fortunately rare but particularly serious pathology, Ataxia Telangiectasia (I won't insist, look at www.atcp.org and www.mindset-rx.com to understand my interest in this genetic disease), I have plenty of time. My grandchildren keep me busy a lot, that's for sure and more than pleasant, but writing brings me a welcome challenge in my life. In fact, I must say that after writing over a hundred scientific articles, about thirty patents, and dozens of contracts of all kinds, writing for pleasure is particularly enjoyable... In recent years, I have written three autobiographical books, two in English, "Marathoning through Life" and "Turning 69 on Top of Kilimanjaro and… The Rest of the Story," and one in French, "Réunion de Famille: Finally, Life is Beautiful." I also wrote a small children's coloring and story book, "La Coccinelle et le Coquelicot," as well as its English translation, "The Ladybug and the Poppy." All these books, I published either as a self-publisher (Réunion de Famille) or directly on Amazon. Then, recently I published with L'Harmattan editions a "scientific-philosophical" essay inspired by my passion for neurobiology, "Les Mathématiques du Libre Arbitre." And finally, I published with Le Lys Bleu editions a novel with a strong autobiographical flavor, "Kendall Square." I have several other writing projects in progress that I am working on in parallel. Come back to my site regularly, I promise you more titles in the not-too distant future!