Dr. Damien Faivre

Damien Faivre studied physical chemistry in Lyon (France) and Montreal (Canada). He continued with a doctoral degree in geochemistry in Paris (France) and Pasadena (USA).

He worked as Marie Curie Fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology (Bremen, Germany), before joining the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (Potsdam, Germany) as Group Leader. He then joined the Bioscience and Biotechnology Institute of Aix Marseille at the CEA Cadarache (France) as Research Director, before arriving in Riga (Latvia) as ERA Chair in 2025. 

His research interests include (bio)mineralization, with iron oxides and magnetotactic bacteria, and with calcium carbonate and coccolithophore algae. He also initiated a line of research on biological and synthetic microswimmers. His contribution in these fields is particularly acknowledged to be at the forefront because it combines in-house designed spectro-microscopic methods with a multidisciplinary approach to complex problems. 

Accordingly, he has authored many seminal publications, several in high-ranking journals of different fields, and was awarded an ERC Grant in addition to the ERA Chair.