Charles White is a Directeur de Recherche (DR1, senior scientist) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and directs a CNRS/University/INSERM research group studying the mechanisms by which cells maintain the integrity of their genomes. Following an Honours BSc. degree in Genetics and Biochemistry at the University of Adelaide (Australia), he carried out his PhD at the MRC (London, U.K.) in the group of Robin Holliday, and a post-doc at Boston in the group of James E. Haber, on the mechanisms of DNA repair and genetic recombination in yeast. Particularly notable results of this work were the establishment of the "Physical Monitoring" of recombination in vivo - establishing the kinetics and two novel molecular intermediates of genetic recombination in eukaryotes (including the resection of 5'-ended DNA strand at DNA breaks, now believed to be the key step in determining the choice of recombination pathway). In 1994 he was recruited by the CNRS at the University of Paris (Orsay), to establish a research group on molecular mechanisms of genetic recombination in plants. The group moved to the University Blaise Pascal at Clermont-Ferrand in 1998 and actively pursues research into the molecular mechanisms responsible for the maintenance of genome integrity in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
President of the Société Française de Génétique from 2015-2020, he has participated in numerous review committees at international (EU Descartes Prize, FP5, FP7, H2020, Horizon Europe ...) and national levels (scientific commissions of the IRD and the INSERM, CEA, Institut Pasteur, Génoplante, AERES, HCERES thesis and habilitation juries ...). He has organised a number of  international scientific meetings (notably the "Genetic stability and Change"  EMBO workshop series), coordinated two, and participated in four other European Framework and Marie-Curie network grants, as well as numerous public and industry funded projects in France.