Jory Lietard hails from Montpellier in France. He received his PhD in Chemistry and Molecular Sciences at Bern University in the group of Prof. Christian Leumann. In 2015, after a postdoctoral stay at McGill University (Montréal, Canada), he joined the group of Assoc. Prof. Mark Somoza at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, where he has been working as PI since 2019. In March 2024 Jory started his tenure as Assistant Professor in Nucleic Acid Chemistry.
His research focuses on the high-throughput synthesis of nucleic acid microarrays, particularly with RNA and chemically-modified oligonucleotides. The synthesis at such large scales, delivering hundreds of thousands of unique sequences in a single run, has applications in data storage, sequencing and gene assembly. The emphasis is also put on high-throughput assays that can help elucidate the sequence preferences of enzymes and DNA/RNA-binding proteins or help identify the ideal combination of DNA/RNA modifications for therapeutic oligonucleotides. With a rich toolbox of available canonical and non-canonical nucleosides, nucleic acid microarrays are also used as a platform to discover new aptamers and to better understand their binding modes.
