Laurent Chavatte is a biochemist and currently CNRS Research Director at the International Center for Infectiology Research (CIRI, Lyon, France). He earned his PhD in Paris, France, studying the mechanism of translation termination in eukaryotes, and graduated in 2001. He completed his post-doctoral fellowship (2002–2005) under the mentoring of Donna Driscoll at the Lerner Research Institute (Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.), where he studied the mechanism of translation recoding of UGA as selenocysteine. He joined the CNRS in 2005 and was a recipient of the ATIP young investigator award (2008–2012). He is currently the president of the SFERETE and the FESTEM. He is now working in the RNA Expression in Viruses and Eukaryotes (REVE) team headed by Dr. Theophile Ohlmann. His research interests are mostly focused on many aspects of selenium biochemistry and notably on how selenocysteine insertion in selenoproteins is regulated.