Daniel Isabey

Daniel ISABEY is Directeur de Recherche Emeritus at CNRS, at the Mondor Institute of Biomedical Research in Créteil (France). He graduated from University Paris 6 (Pierre and Marie Curie) where he prepared his PhD thesis on pulsatile flow in branching systems. In 1986, he obtained the highest degree of academic recognition becoming Docteur es Sciences Physiques. He created and leaded until 2016 a multidisciplinary research group hosted by Inserm, University Paris Est Créteil and CNRS whose main activity was Cell and Respiratory Biomechanics. Throughout his carrier, Daniel Isabey has published 116 research articles in highly ranked refereed international journals, contributed to 12 book published, and supervised 12 PhD thesis. He has a h-index of 29. He has been elected member of the World Congress Council of Biomechanics until 2022 and actively contributes to the scientific committee of European Cell Mechanics Conferences which are organized every 2 years. He is member of the BMES society.

Dr Isabey is a World expert on biomechanics. He spent 2 years as post-doctoral fellow at Mc Gill University in Montréal (Québec, Canada) working with Professor HK Chang. He is one of the very first experimentalists to have measured the secondary components of flow in a central airway model. Once recruited by CNRS as full time researcher, he rapidly constituted a research group at Inserm (National Institute of Health and Medical research in France) to work on unsteady flow in the airways. His work focused on the transport mechanisms behind High Frequency Ventilation, a new ventilation method who attracted the bioengineering community at that time. In close collaboration with the Intensive Care Unit at Hospital Henri Mondor in Créteil (France), he engineered and demonstrated with the clinicians of his group the exceptional efficiency in terms of gas exchange and survival of Non Invasive Ventilatory support (NIV). He notably authored two decisive publications which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1990 and 1995 (respectively cited 715 and 2064 times) and which signed the worldwide recognition of this therapeutic method for acute respiratory failure. In parallel, Dr Isabey’s group has developed knowledge and methods enabling to improve the patient quality of life through better functional assessment of the respiratory system, better management of ventilation, and the integration of tools from engineering science to respiratory physiology and clinical management. Assuming that the failure of respiratory treatment, notably in cases of mechanical ventilation, may have hidden cellular causes related to mechanical aggression, Daniel Isabey has contributed to develop the new field of Cell Biomechanics and dedicated his studies to the respiratory system. Starting with mechanical models of cellular tensegrity, he revisited a micromanipulation method called Magnetic Twisting Cytometry from which mechanical properties and adhesion parameters can now be obtained. His group has gained an international recognition in this rapidly growing field studying the molecular mechanisms by which lung cells are sensitive to mechanical or microbiological environments.