With Elodie Laine (Sorbonne University) we have created and implemented Meet-U, a new teaching method that combines hands-on training, collaborative work, project manageemnt, and aims at bridging the gap between teaching and research.

Meet-U aims at immersing students into the role of researchers by engaging them in the entire process of a project realization from the conception to the presentation of the project to their scientific peers during a public meeting day. It gives the students the opportunity to address an open question in Biology, to conceive their own strategy, to develop the tools and pipelines of a bioinformatics research project, and to actively participate in the life of a research community. The students are grouped in teams of 4-5 people and have to realize a project from A to Z that answers a challenging question in Biology. Meet-U promotes "coopetition", as the students collaborate within and between the teams and are also in competition with each other to develop the best final product. Meet-U fosters interactions between different actors of education and research through the organization of the final meeting day, open to everyone, where the students present their work to a jury of researchers and the jury members give research seminars.

1. Realize a project from A to Z that addresses an unsolved and open question in biology
2. Present the results to a jury of researchers expert in the field during the Meet-U symposium

For the 2020 session, Meet-U addresses the prediction of protein folds from protein sequences. The meeting day gathered around 150 people and the jury members were J. Andreani (I2BC, Saclay), M. Baaden (IBPC, Paris), C. Mayer (Institut Pasteur, Paris), J. Söding (Max Planck, Göttingen), P. Tuffery (U. de Paris, Paris).

For the 2019 session, Meet-U addresses the prediction of protein folds from protein sequences. The meeting day gathered around 150 people and the jury members were B. Bardiaux (Institut Pasteur), J. Cortes (LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse), M. Punta (ICR, London), M. Rooman (ULB, Bruxelles) and S. Wodak (U. of Toronto, Toronto/VIB, Bruxelles).

For the 2018 session, Meet-U involves two additionnal universities and gathers Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), Univ Paris-Sud - Univ Paris-Saclay, Université Paris-Diderot and Université d'Evry, all from Paris area, in France. The meeting day gathered around 150 people and the jury members were A. Bonvin (Utrecht University), F. Cazals (Inria, Sophia Antipolis), F. Fraternali (King's College London), S. Grudinin (Inria, Grenoble) and D. Ritchie (Inria, Nancy).