[1] She later moved to University of Toulouse in France and was awarded a Ph.D. for her research on botany on the vegetation of south-west Cambodia in 1969.
She specialised in the Faboideae subfamily particularly the genera Euchresta, Gueldenstaedtia, Medicago, Parochetus and the monospecific genus Trifidacanthus.
[1] In 1980, she managed to flee to France and work in the Botanical Laboratory of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
In the same institution she contributed significantly to identifying and classifying plants of Cambodia and Indochina, which remain relatively unknown.
[4] She wrote a book, published in 1982, about the food plants of Cambodia that were eaten in normal and famine times.