22 September 2026Three new PhD students are starting their doctoral research at the CEE-M this autumn. What projects are they working on? What are their academic and professional backgrounds? Here are a few insights into the profiles of our new members:
Julia BALOYI
- PhD research project: “Between disgust and immunity: avoidance strategies and vulnerability to foodborne pathogen risk”. This PhD is part of the interdisciplinary SENS-ALIM project, funded through the NEXUS programme of the ExposUM Institute. It will be conducted jointly at ISEM and the CEE-M, under the supervision of Marie Charpentier (ISEM) and Arnaud Tognetti (CEE-M). The research aims to understand how disgust contributes to the adjustment of avoidance behaviours and physiological and immune responses according to individuals’ immune vulnerability. More specifically, it seeks to: (i) assess the impact of disgust on food avoidance behaviours, particularly through interpersonal distance and approach–avoidance decisions; (ii) investigate the links between disgust and, on the one hand, the associated physiological responses and, on the other, the activation of anticipatory immune responses; and (iii) determine whether increased immune vulnerability is associated with greater sensitivity to disgust and with amplified behavioural, physiological and immune responses.
- Academic and professional background: Julia holds a Master’s degree in Consumer Research, specialising in food choice behaviour (Physiological and Psychological Food Choice Determinants – P2FOOD), from Institut Agro Dijon, France. She completed her first- and second-year Master’s internships at Umeå University (Sweden) and International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) (France), where she worked on projects focusing on consumers, their needs and their behaviours. In both projects, the aim was to identify the factors influencing consumers’ food choices, such as their motivations, barriers, perceived health benefits, values and nutritional knowledge. The projects also sought to understand how these factors influence the adoption of reduced-sugar foods and plant-based fermented foods in everyday diets. She previously obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Food Science from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Luka BOISGIBAULT
- PhD research project: Luka’s PhD focuses on cognitive inference applied to strategic decision-making. It aims to identify and better understand individuals’ reasoning processes in game theory based on their choices and continuous data captured through eye-tracking. A second strand of the research uses Multi-Armed Bandit algorithms to design more adaptive and efficient experimental protocols. Luka is supervised by Adrien Nguyen-Huu (CEE-M).
- Academic and professional background: Luka holds a Master’s degree in Financial Markets, specialising in market risk analysis, from the University of Montpellier. He completed an internship in financial structuring, which involves designing financial products or arrangements tailored to a specific need, combining financial analysis, modelling and, in some cases, financial engineering. This experience led him to redirect his career towards research, with the aim of engaging in an intellectually stimulating project to which he hopes to make a meaningful contribution.
Luca ROMANAZZI
- PhD research project: This PhD aims to investigate how the perception of disease cues influences social behaviour. The project draws in particular on game theory and adopts a strongly interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of psychology, evolutionary biology and immunology, with the aim of understanding the behavioural and physiological mechanisms involved in the perception and management of disease risk. Luca’s PhD is supervised by Marie Charpentier (ISEM) and co-supervised by Arnaud Tognetti (CEE-M) and Camille Ferdenzi (CRNL).
- Academic and professional background: Luca holds a Master’s degree in Biology, specialising in animal behaviour, from the University of Neuchâtel. He completed several research internships focusing on the behaviour of non-human primates. He also worked as a research officer at the University Centre for General Medicine and Public Health in Lausanne, where he contributed to a human biomonitoring project aimed at better understanding occupational exposures in the recycling sector.