Isabelle ZAQUINE was born on February, 6th 1960. In 1982, she received an Engineering diploma from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs Electriciens de Grenoble. Then she joined the « Laboratoire d'Electronique et de Technologie de l'Informatique (LETI) » as a doctoral candidate on SIS mixers for microwave detection in radioastronomy. She received her PHD from the University of Grenoble in 1985. Her first research job was with Thomson-CSF at the «  Laboratoire Central de Recherche » . She investigated the fabrication and properties of magnetic materials for radar applications. From 1988, she studied high Tc superconductors and their application to SQUIDs and microwave detection. In 1991, she joined the «  Institut National Des Télécommunications » where her research dealt with uniplanar microwave circuits and also millimeter wave material characterization. She joined Télécom ParisTech in 1995 and started working on nonlinear and diffractive optics for optical signal processing. In 2004, she received her "Habilitation à  Diriger des Recherches" from the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay. Her current research is focused on entangled photon sources for quantum communications.

She is a member of the « Société Francaise d'Optique » and the « European Optical Society ».