It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Jean-Nicolas Dumez on August 18, 2025. Aged 41, he had been a researcher at the CNRS since 2013 and joined CEISAM five years later.
Jean-Nicolas Dumez, studented at the ENS in Lyon from 2004 to 2008 and got the « agrégation » physical sciences, before defended his thesis in 2011 under the supervision of Lyndon Emsley at the Centre de RMN à très hauts champs de Lyon (CRMN). He went on to complete two postdoctoral fellowships, the first at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and the second at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. During this time, he became familiar with magnetic resonance, its applications in materials research, and medical imaging.
He joined CEISAM’s analytical chemistry team (MIMM) through a regional Connect Talents program, where he conducted research in NMR spectroscopy for applications in analytical and molecular chemistry. A brilliant physicist and chemist, Jean-Nicolas Dumez received his first grant from the European Research Council in 2018. His DINAMIX project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant, aimed to enable a more complete description of complex mixtures, based on new analytical methods using diffusional NMR. This ambition to study chemical reactions in real time was confirmed with an ERC Consolidator Grant, obtained in 2023 for the UNMIX project, the year in which he was also appointed Director of Research at the CNRS.
He leaves a huge void in the hearts of his family, friends, and colleagues.