Christian Sardet, PhD, is a founder of and emeritus researcher at the Developmental Biology Laboratory at the Institut de la Mer de Villefranche (IMEV), under the aegis of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Paris-Sorbonne University. He earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of many scientific publications and of the book Plankton: Wonders of the Drifting World (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and is one of the founders of the Tara Oceans expedition. Sardet is the recipient of two prizes from the French Academy of Sciences and the Légion d’Honneur, among many other awards. He is also an artist and the creator of award-winning films. Sardet lives near Nice in the south of France.