Jocelyn Étienne

Ali Wahhod

PhD, Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021–

Ali focuses on the understaning of the shape and dynamics of a cell spreading on a flat substrate, in collaboration with Jonathan Fouchard (LBD, Sorbonne Univ) and Atef Asnacios.

Antoine Jallon

PhD, Université Côte d'Azur, 2023–

In a joint PhD between Inst Biologie Valrose in Nice and LIPHY, Antoine Jallon uses both experimental and modelling approaches to understand the physics of living tissue internalisation during morphogenesis. He works under a joint supervision between Matteo Rauzi and myself, and in close collaboration with Catherine Quilliet.

Kamal Tripathi

Post-doc funded by Tec21, 2023--

In a 3SR--LIPHY collaboration, Kamal Tripathi is currently establishing preparation protocols of the networks in molecular dynamics simulations. In particular, he will determine whether they imply or not the presence of frustrations and associated residual stress, which would then need to be taken into account. This work is in collaboration with Mehdi Bouzid.

Alex Nestor-Bergmann

Independent post-doctoral researcher (Herchel-Smith fellowship), 2017--2021

Alex is based in Benedicte Sanson's group at the University of Cambridge, and is funded by a Herchel-Smith fellowship that he has obtained for his project.

Together, and in collaboration with Alexander Fletcher, we have designed a novel method to extend the vertex model method towards including explicitly shear between the cortex of each cell sharing a junction. This is applied in particular to neighbour exchanges in the morphogenesis of epithelia, see our PLOS Comput Biol paper.

Sara Bouizakarne

PhD student, 2018–2022

Sara's question was about the mechanical role of the anisotropy of actomyosin. She was mainly supervised by Alice Nicolas (LTM) using in vitro monolayers in nanofrabricated environments to investigate this.

Now recruitment consultant for life sciences. Published paper of her work.

Haythem Chelly

PhD, Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021

Haythem has been jointly directed by Pierre Recho and Claude Verdier. His topic was the mechanics of cell migration on a complex substrate, see our paper.

Nilankur Dutta

PhD, funded by Tec21, 2019

Nilankur was jointly directed by Guy Blanchard and has worked on the subcellular dynamics of pulsatile actomyosin during embryo development.
Read his PhD thesis and a published paper

He is now post-doc in ILM Lyon

Julien Fierling

Post-doctoral researcher, 2016–2017

Julien, along with Catherine Quilliet and Philippe Marmottant, has worked on the physical principles of the deformations of the Drosophila embryo during gastrulation.

See published paper in Nature Comms.

Mahamar Dicko

PhD, Université de Grenoble, 2016

During his PhD thesis, jointly directed with Pierre in the applied math laboratory in Grenoble, Mahamar Dicko has developed a numerical method in order to solve flows occuring along curved deformable surfaces of the space.

His MSc work is described in Mahamar Dicko's poster (in French, poster prize at SMAI conference 2013).

This novel method is implemented as an extension of the rheolef finite element software.

Among the applications, we will focus on the mechanics of Drosophila germ band extension in collaboration with the group of Benedicte Sanson in the University of Cambridge, see our PLOS Computational Biology paper.

Download Mahamar's thesis (in French)

Guido Vitale

Post-doctoral research fellow, ANR Transmig, 2013–2015

Guido Vitale focused on the mechanical equilibrium of spreading cells and of cells undergoing diapedesis. He was also interested in the inverse problem in traction force microscopy.