From a fundamental research background, I enjoy tackling complex problems through statistics and data analysis. My PhD led me to work mainly with Python and R, but I’m always interested in learning new tools and approaches. I have a strong ability for self-learning, which allowed me to solve a wide variety of problems such as fitting demographic models on ecological data using bayesian statistics, or automated species identification and counting from videos data. I currently use my skills as a statistician at Sanofi, where I work on R&D of vaccines.

Skills

• R for data science (Tidyverse, Rstan, Rshiny…)
• Python for data science (Pandas, sklearn, seaborn…)
• Git
• Unix/Linux environments
• Machine learning
• Bayesian statistics

Experience

Biostatistician

since 2024, Sanofi - Lyon

Bringing my expertise in statistics and data to Sanofi’s mRNA Center of Excellence – a structure dedicated to the R&D of mRNA vaccines. I work on various projects, among which:

• The development an R-package for thermostability analyses through bayesian statistics.
• Design of experiments, statistical analyses and data vizualisation.

PhD in Theoretical Ecology

2019-2022, Université de Montpellier

Working on the fascinating topic of ecosystem stability in the context of global changes. Conducting research at the crossroads of life sciences and mathematics led me to:

• Entirely automate species recognition and count from video data using machine learning, reaching up to 99% accuracy vs. 80% for human observers. This allowed to monitor the dynamics of 270 microbial cultures, a tenfold increase from human recognition and counting.
• Succesfully fit complex demographic and epidemiological models to time series using bayesian statistics. This allowed to parameterize an in silico reproduction of a lab experiment and to estimate the transmission rate and virulence of an intra-cellular parasite.
• Develop a dimension reduction method for spatially structured dynamical systems using formal mathematics.

Research internship in Evolutionary Game Theory

2017, University of British Columbia - Vancouver

Investigating the effect of environmental heterogeneity and environmental feedbacks on the evolutionary stable strategies of classical games. I developed a novel framework for evolutionary game theory in which an agent’s strategy affects its local environment, and an agent’s environment affects its fitness, resulting in a strategy-environment feedback. This research project involved both numerical simulations and analytical modeling.

Research internship in Macro-evolution

2016, École Normale Supérieure - Paris

Developping methods to infer past phenotypes from the phylogenies of co-evolving clades (e.g., figs and fig wasps). A first step into the world of bayesian statistics that led me to code a bayesian integrator from scratch to handle the complex model structures involved.

Education

2023: Data Scientist Associate certificate, DataCamp

2022: PhD in Theoretical Ecology - Dynamics and stability of spatially structured ecosytems, Université de Montpellier - Montpellier

2019: MS in Theoretical Ecology, Sorbonne Université - Paris

2016: BS in Life Sciences, École Normale Supérieure - Paris

Publications

• Camille Saade, Emanuel A. Fronhofer, Benoît Pichon, and Sonia Kéfi. “ Landscape structure affects metapopulation-scale tipping points.” The American Naturalist 202, no. 1 (2023): E000-E000.
• Camille Saade. “ Dynamics and stability of spatially structured ecosystems.” PhD diss., Université de Montpellier, 2022.
• Kéfi, Sonia, Camille Saade, Eric L. Berlow, Juliano S. Cabral, and Emanuel A. Fronhofer. “ Scaling up our understanding of tipping points.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 377, no. 1857 (2022): 20210386.
• Camille Saade, Sonia Kéfi, Claire Gougat-Barbera, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Emanuel A. Fronhofer. “ Spatial autocorrelation of local patch extinctions drives recovery dynamics in metacommunities.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 289, no. 1972 (2022): 20220543.
• Nørgaard, Louise S., Giacomo Zilio, Camille Saade, Claire Gougat‐Barbera, Matthew D. Hall, Emanuel A. Fronhofer, and Oliver Kaltz. “ An evolutionary trade‐off between parasite virulence and dispersal at experimental invasion fronts.” Ecology Letters 24, no. 4 (2021): 739-750.
• Hauert, Christoph, Camille Saade, and Alex McAvoy. “ Asymmetric evolutionary games with environmental feedback.” Journal of theoretical biology 462 (2019): 347-360.

Interests

• Playing jazz
• Rock Climbing
• Sourdough baking and fermented foods