Carole Moquin-Pattey, head of unit, European Medical Research Councils, Strasbourg, France

The jewellery designed by Carole Moquin-Pattey embraces duality: a brooch may transform into a necklace, and small studs into long elegant earrings. Moquin-Pattey's own career is marked by a series of double lives — art and science, chemistry and biology, adaptability and obstinacy.

It has led her from work in a hospital pharmacy to heading the European Medical Research Councils (EMRC), via plant biology, marine chemistry and membership of the French ethics committee. Along the way she learned Indonesian and, with her banker husband, raised three children. “Not a typical career path,” she laughs. (see CV).

She dropped in on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography during a holiday after graduating as a pharmacist. That impulsive move led to four months' research with William Fenical on soft corals, and to the realization that her future lay in life sciences. An encounter at a Gordon research conference sent her home to France to do a PhD.

During a few years in Australia and Indonesia, a mix of stubbornness and opportunism kept her going when the science job outlook looked bleak.

“I was translating drug-approval documents, but couldn't get a full-time job,” she recalls. “I took care of my children, and it was a very enjoyable period.” A successful sideline in jewellery design didn't, however, distract her when she had a chance to return to science.

Her efforts eventually secured her a postdoc in the United States. Back in France after a decade, a 40-year-old mother-of-three without a job offer, she was undeterred by advice to stay at home. One of many unsolicited letters persuaded Boehringer Mannheim to create a new position for her. From there it was a short step to the centre of national research funding at the medical research foundation (FRM) and policy making at the national institute of health and medical research (Inserm).

Her EMRC post involves creating a new pathway for clinical research in Europe with a single entry point: part of the European public–private initiative for developing new therapeutic tools. It uses her experience in science and legal and regulatory areas — and with her easel at home, she still finds time for art.