Michaël Smietana was educated at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. He received his PhD in 2001 from the University of Strasbourg under the guidance of the late Dr Charles Mioskowski. He then joined Stanford University as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Eric Kool’s group for two years. In 2004, he moved to the University of Montpellier as an Associate Professor, working in the Nucleic Acids Department of the Institute of Biomolecules Max Mousseron (IBMM). He received his Habilitation (HDR) in 2010 the was appointed Full Professor in 2012. In 2018 he received the Jean-Marie Lehn award from the Organic Chemistry Division of the French Chemical Society. Since 2020 he leads the ChemBioNAC team at the Institute of Biomolecules Max Mousseron. His current research interests focus on molecular recognition, DNA-based asymmetric catalysis and nucleic acid bioconjugates.