Bénédicte Menez

Bénédicte Menez is a French geomicrobiologist and university professor in Earth Sciences at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. In 2012, she received the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in the “Young Female Scientist” category for her work.

Life and work Bénédicte Menez earned both her doctorate in 1999 and her habilitation in 2009 at Paris Diderot University, also known as University of Paris 7.

Menez leads the Current and Primitive Geobiosphere team at the Institute of Earth Physics in Paris, where her group has integrated results from spectroscopy, microscopy, microbiology and geochemistry to study interactions between microorganisms and rocks that she characterizes using microimaging and spectroscopy techniques. Since 2001, she has been developing strategies to study the deep biosphere, the intraterrestrial life that develops in the depths of the Earth's crust.

2012: Irène Joliot-Curie Prize, “Young Female Scientist” category.

Selected publications In publications, her name is spelled as Menez or Ménez.

Menez, B., Philippot, P., Bonnin-Mosbah, M., Simionovici, A., & Gibert, F. (2002). Analysis of individual fluid inclusions using synchrotron X-ray fluorescence microprobe: progress toward calibration for trace elements. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 66(4), 561–576. Ménez, B., Pasini, V., & Brunelli, D. (2012). Life in the hydrated suboceanic mantle. Nature Geoscience, 5(2), 133–137. Trias, R., Ménez, B., le Campion, P., Zivanovic, Y., Lecourt, L., Lecoeuvre, A.... & Gérard, E. (2017). High reactivity of deep biota under anthropogenic injection into basalt. Nature communications, 8(1), 1–14. Ménez, B., Pisapia, C., Andreani, M., Jamme, F., Vanbellingen, Q. P., Brunelle, A.... & Réfrégiers, M. (2018). Abiotic synthesis of amino acids in the recesses of the oceanic lithosphere. Nature, 564(7734), 59–63. Ménez, B. (2020). Abiotic hydrogen and methane: Fuels for life. Elements: An International Magazine of Mineralogy, Geochemistry, and Petrology, 16(1), 39–46.