Paul was awarded an European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant in 2019. He is an elected full member and exexcutive board member of the Institut Grand-Ducal, Section des Sciences naturelles, physiques et mathématiques, and the Académie Lorraine des Sciences. In 2018, Paul was awarded the Grand Prix in Biological Sciences of the Institut Grand-Ducal.
Paul’s main research focus is on using Systems Biology approaches for unraveling fundamental ecological relationships within and between microbial populations in situ. His group has pioneered the development of appropriate wet- and dry-lab methodologies for performing systematic molecular measurements of microbial consortia over space and time. This allows for example to define lifestyle strategies of distinct populations and link these to genetic and functional traits. The same approaches are allowing the study of microbiome-host molecular interactions. In this context, his group has developed a microfluidics-based in vitro model of the human-microbial gastrointestinal interface called HuMiX.