- Date Of Birth: December 10, 1974
- Date Of Death: April 23, 2022
- State: Florida
Emmanuelle Angèle Marie Tognoli, Ph.D.
10 December 1974 — 23 April 2022 (age 47)
Dr. Emmanuelle Tognoli passed away in Boca Raton, Florida on 23 April 2022 at age 47 after a short but valiant fight against a rare cancer.
Born on 10 December 1974, Emmanuelle was the younger child of Josette Tognoli (née Demange) and the late Jean-Marie Tognoli. She grew up in the village of Darnieulles, outside the city of Épinal in eastern France. She referred to the surrounding region, including especially the Vosges mountains, as “my land” throughout her life, even as her journey carried her far from home.
Emmanuelle was a neuroscientist with both a deep passion and an extraordinary talent for interdisciplinary research. She received her Baccalaureat in Physics and Mathematics from the Lycée Saint-Joseph in Épinal in 1992. She then switched to study Psychology at the Université de Nancy, where she earned her Licence (1997), DEA (1998), and Ph.D. (2003), the latter based in part on her work at a CNRS laboratory affiliated with the Université de Lille.
Emmanuelle moved to Boca Raton in 2003 to take a postdoctoral position in electrophysiology in the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University. She remained a member of the Center for the rest of her career, joining FAU as a research faculty member in 2007. Ever committed to interdisciplinarity, Emmanuelle also held appointments in FAU’s Departments of Physics and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Her scientific research brought together elements of experimental psychology, computational neuroscience, and dynamical systems theory.
Entering what should have been the middle of her career, Emmanuelle also became deeply concerned with the question of how best to support women entering science and other technical fields. Bringing the full force of her scientific acumen to bear, she was able to extract startling patterns and trends from mountains of raw data tracing the career arcs of women in science. Her work on this issue, as on so many others, remains unfinished.
Emmanuelle was an irrepressibly kind and effortlessly generous friend, cousin, niece, sister, daughter, wife, and mother. Since 2015, her only daughter, Elyse Beetle, sat comfortably at the center of Emmanuelle’s world. But that world always seemed to allow extra time and space for the many others she loved. In addition to Elyse, Emmanuelle is survived by her husband, Chris Beetle, of Boca Raton; by her mother, Josette Tognoli, of Sanchey, France; by her brother, Bertrand Tognoli, of Antibes, France; and by a large community of extended family, friends, and colleagues from around the world who mourn her passing. Among her colleagues, she was especially attached to those she termed her “scientific children” — a cadre of younger researchers she mentored over the years, from high schoolers to Ph.D. candidates to post-docs — who were, outside of her family, ever Emmanuelle’s highest priority and hope.
