** I, Isabelle Veissier** (women, DVM, PhD, HDR), am a research director from INRAE, the French national institute for research in agriculture, nutrition and environment. After my veterinary studies, I started to work at INRA (from 1983) with a focus on animal behaviour and welfare. I studied the different facets of the behaviour of cattle and sheep following the idea that behaviour tells us about how animals see the world around them, how they form social bonds, how they learn, and what they feel. I worked on social behaviours, maternal behaviour, human-animal relationship, learning and emotional abilities, and the assessment of animal welfare. My work aims at reconciling animal production and animal welfare. Currently my research is focused on behavioural changes as early signs of welfare disorders - these changes being likely to be detected thanks to Precision Livestock Farming tools -, and on assessing how farmers can reach good performances both in animal welfare and environment protection and be economically viable. What I most like in research is to collaborate with other scientists from natural sciences as well as from other disciplinary fields (social sciences, philosophy, mathematics…), across Europe and internationally. I played key roles in several large European projects or networks such as Welfare Quality®, EU-PLF or [Smartcow] (https://www.smartcow.eu/) and more recently in the European center for Animal Welfare dedicated to ruminants and Equines (https://www.eurcaw-ruminants-equines.eu/), I published over 150 scientific articles in peered reviewed journals and supervised 15 PhD theses.