Françoise Coucheney is Lecturer in Microbiology at the University of Lille. She obtained her PhD in Food Microbiology at the University of Burgundy, France. Through the study of microbial ecosystems of local products (cheeses), by culture-dependent approach and by metagenetics, Françoise Coucheney approached the biopreservation of foods by searching for antagonistic strains of yeasts and bacteria. The objective is to isolate antimicrobial substances, to identify them, to define their mode of action and to consider a food application (food preservation) or medical application (replacement or potentiation of conventional antibiotics). She is also involved in metabolic engineering by studying the production of lipopeptide isoforms produced by the non-ribosomal pathway.