Pascal Hersen (CNRS, Institut Curie) is a physicist, senior group leader and director of the Physics of Cells and Cancer laboratory (UMR168, Institut Curie, PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université). His research team develops methods in microscopy, microfabrication and synthetic biology to study the physics of living cells and specifically how information flows in cellular processes. He is a pioneer in the field of Cybergenetics, a field of research at the interface of control theory and synthetic biology which aims at taking control of cellular processes in real time thanks to external feedback control loop, interfacing living systems with computers and machines. Recently, his team has turned its attention to the use of optogenetics to drive various cellular processes such as metabolic cooperation and mating behavior in budding yeast.