Dr Charles Gauthier was born in Péribonka (Canada), which is a little town of no more than 500 people in the North of Quebec Province. In 2000, he attended Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC) to study chemistry at BSc level. After a summer work placement in polymer chemistry (Alcan), he discovered the field of natural products chemistry in LASEVE laboratory. He then pursued his graduate education (MSc and PhD) at UQAC under the guidance of Prof. André Pichette, chemist, and Prof. Jean Legault, clinical pharmacologist. His PhD studies (2005-2008), funded by the Fonds Québécois de Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies (FQRNT), were focused on the synthesis of lupane-type triterpenoid saponins as a novel class of non-haemolytic anticancer agents. His MSc and PhD results have been published in twelve peer-reviewed papers and two patent applications. In 2009, Charles left the Canada and moved to France to undertake a postdoctoral fellowship (Vasant & Kusum Joshi and Bourses Emile-Roux) at the Institut Pasteur in Paris under the supervision of Dr Laurence Mulard. He worked there on the synthesis of acetylated decasaccharides as mimetic fragments of the Shigella flexneri serotype 2a antigen-O. The aim of his studies was to prepare a glycoconjugate vaccine in order to prevent shigellosis infections caused by S. flexneri 2a in developing countries. Funded by the FQRNT (2010-2011), he then came to the University of Oxford, UK, to undertake a second postdoctoral position within the Ben Davis group. His research focused on the preparation of chemically modified adenovirus vectors in collaboration with the Dept of Clinical Pharmacology. In September 2011, Charles came back to France and accepted a tenured position of "Maître de Conférences" in organic chemistry at the Université de Poitiers. His research project aiming at developing a semi-synthetic vaccine against melioidosis has been funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche Jeunes Chercheuses Jeunes Chercheurs (ANR JCJC) and by the Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA). He has been an Adjunct Professor at UQAC since May 2012. Charles has published  more than 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals and presented his results in numerous national and international scientific meetings. Since June 2016, Charles is back to the "Belle Province" to start a new academic position as an Assistant Professor at INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier in Laval (Québec), Canada. This research University is the only member in North America of the Institut Pasteur International Network.