Sébastien Matlosz, soon to be PhD!

Meet Sébastien Matlosz, a PhD student at the University of Iceland defending his PhD this Friday! We are very proud of him for (almost) finishing his PhD, so that’s why we are shining a spotlight on him ☺️

From France to Iceland

Sébastien was born and raised in France. As a kid, he had many dreams and wanted to be a scientist investigating animal behaviour or a wildlife photographer in remote parts of the globe. Some people would call Iceland remote, but instead of becoming a wildlife photographer, he became a molecular biologist. But that did not just happen overnight.

At the University of Lorraine in France Sébastien completed his Bachelors in Biology in 2014 and his Masters in Biosciences and Health Engineering in 2017. It was during his Masters that Sébastien became interested in genetics and epigenetics. While his Master’s courses focused more on health and medical research, he did two internships with the Arctic charr research group at the University of Iceland where he met the people he started his PhD with in 2018.

The good and the bad of a PhD

During his PhD Sébastien studied how changes in DNA methylation affect the development of Arctic charr in Lake Thingvallavatn to understand why these fish have different head shapes. His favourite part of being a scientist is investigating things few people have investigated before and finding answers to explain how the world works. Sébastien’s favourite parts about doing a PhD were meeting sweet people inside and outside of work in Iceland and abroad at conferences. As well as, getting to remote places for fieldwork and learning new skills. But it was not always sunshine and roses and he hated the constant struggle of getting more money to do research.

Advice for future students

His advice for people who want to do a Master’s or PhD would be to talk to other students already working in the lab when you visit prospective labs. They are the best source of information on how a lab and a team function. They can tell you the good and bad things about the supervisor. You never know how it is to work with a supervisor just from talking to them. Furthermore, they can tell you about the available lab resources (or those that won’t be available to you). However, if you have an online interview this might be hard, but try to find a way to do some investigating anyway by emailing or talking to the students in an online meeting.

Unwinding

Outside of his research Sébastien is a big reader and loves to compose music. You can listen to his album ‘Arctic Times’ on all your main streaming services.

Spotify | Apple music | Bandcamp

Sébastien in a nutshell