Janine Cossy studied at the Université Champagne-Ardenne in Reims, where she completed her PhD in photochemistry under the supervision of Professor Jean-Pierre Pète. After a two-year post-doctoral stay with Professor Barry M. Trost, at the University of Wisconsin (USA), she returned to Reims where, in 1990, she became Director of Research at the CNRS. The same year, she was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry at the ESPCI Paris. Janine Cossy’s research focuses on the synthesis of natural products and biologically active molecules (mainly with anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory properties) and on the development of selective synthetic methods in a variety of fields (photochemistry, radical chemistry, rearrangements, organometallic couplings, enzymatic reactions, etc.). Currently, her work is focused on green chemistry, where she is developing catalytic synthetic methods using low-pollution reagents.

Her research work has resulted in over 560 publications and 18 patents. She was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 2017 and to the Académie nationale de pharmacie in 2022. She was President of the Organic Chemistry Division of the SFC (now SCF), a member of the Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry Division at IUPAC. She was associate editor of Organic Letters (ACS) and she is currently associate editor of Tetrahedron and associate editor of the Chimie edition of the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences (a.k.a. Comptes Rendus. Chimie). She is the co-founder of two companies, CDP-Innovation and Acanthe Biotech.