Gaël Panis, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Switzerland (group of Prof. Patrick Viollier). Gaël received the 2016 SSM award for his scientific contributions on the Caulobacter crescentus cell cycle, more particularly his investigation to understand how an epigenetic regulatory pair, composed by the CcrM methyltransferase and the enigmatic transcriptional regulator GcrA, controls cell cycle transcription in this synchronizable bacterial model (PLOS Biology, 11(12):e1001749, 2014). The committee also wanted to encourage his ongoing works on the ΦCbK bacteriophage, a specific Caulobacter virus (Journal of Virology, 86(18):10234-5, 2012). Gaël gave his award lecture entitled "GcrA/CcrM epigenetic module in bacterial cell cycle control and host-pathogen interactions."