In 2012, she received the Irène Joliot-Curie Prize in the “Young Female Scientist” category for her work.
[2][3] Menez leads the Current and Primitive Geobiosphere team at the Institute of Earth Physics in Paris, where her group has integrated results from spectroscopy, microscopy, microbiology and geochemistry to study interactions between microorganisms and rocks that she characterizes using microimaging and spectroscopy techniques.
[4] Specifically, Menez has used synchrotron imaging to obtain results concerning the reaction between bacteria and geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2).
She has shown that the impact of biomass pro-based on CO2 storage could be modulated by the cell death induced by the precipitation of solid carbonate.
The altered peridotites reside on very thick strata of endogenous organic carbon of biological origin.