Invited Speakers

Thierry Naas

Thierry Naas is Professor in Medical Microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris-Saclay. He has over 25 years of experience in clinical microbiology, particularly in antibiotic resistance. He is the leader of the “emerging antibiotic resistance” research team within Unit UMR 1184 (Université Paris-Saclay, INSERM, CEA) directed by R. Legrand, and the National Reference Center (CNR) for resistance to carbapenems antibiotics in Enterobacteriaceae.

Piotr Garstecki

Full Professor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Warsaw, Poland. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Professor George M. Whitesides  Group at Harvard University. He currently leads the Research Group of Microfluidics and Complex Fluids at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Warsaw. The group conducts research on fundamental aspects of the physics of soft matter systems and develops microfluidic tools for chemistry and biology. He co-authored 150 scientific publications (in the renowned scientific journals, such as: Nature, Nature Communications, Angewandte Chemie, Nature Physics) and multiple patent applications. He also co-founded two spin-off companies: Scope Fluidics and Curiosity Diagnostics, both working on the use of microfluidic technologies in medical diagnostics.

Rémi Dangla

Rémi DANGLA is CEO and co-founder of Stilla Technologies, a start-up leading innovation in the field of digital PCR since 2013. Rémi has grown the company through multiple international funding rounds (latest round: $ 22M Series B in 2020). Prior to founding Stilla Technologies, he had developed innovative droplet microfluidic tools, exploring both the fundamental underlying physics and the addressable applications such as digital PCR.

Hélène Péré

Hélène Péré, PharmD-PhD, is an associate Professor and immuno-virologist at European Georges Pompidou Hospital (HEGP) and Medical school of Paris University in Paris, France. She works on virological predictive and prognostic biomarkers for medical care and monitoring of ano-genital and head and neck HPV induced cancers. Her expertise lies in the development of new genomic and ultradeep sequencing technology applied to the comprehension of HPV induced cancerogenesis mechanisms and the use of new ultrasensitive PCR technology such as droplet-based digital PCR to improve clinical management of HPV cancer patient. Recently, during global COVID19 outbreak and applying her expertise for medical advances in comprehension of SARS-CoV-2 infection and medical care of CODID19 patients, she showed, with colleagues, that droplet-based digital PCR (ddPCR) represents a very interesting technology to monitor hospitalized COVID19 patients. Their datas demonstrate the potential interest of the quantitative monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in patients plasma by ddPCR during SARS-CoV2 infection.

Catherine Villard

I started my career in the field of superconductivity, combining theoretical and experimental work, both in fundamental and applied science. In 2006, I have initiated a new research line in the field of neuroscience at Institut Néel in Grenoble. Focusing first on electrical activity recording of neural micro-circuits, I became more and more interested in biophysical aspects of neuronal networks. This thematic evolution was the driving force for joining in 2014 the Physico-Chimie Curie laboratory in Paris, and also since 2015 the Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Institute for microfluidics. My current activities stem from a crosstalk between biophysics and the development of micro technologies. They are dedicated to the cell biology of invasion, and more specifically to cancer cells in circulation and tip-growing cells (neurons and filamentous fungi).

Daria Bonazzi

Daria Bonazzi completed her studies and first research projects in the field of physical chemistry. During her Master 2 internship, she worked for the first time on cells and got interested in living matter. She then joined the lab of Matthieu Piel at Institut Curie for a research internship, where she studied the mechanism and function of cell rounding during mitosis. After this experience, Daria started a PhD in biophysics under the supervision of Nicolas Minc at Institut Jacques Monod, to investigate the developmental polarity and morphogenesis of yeast cells and spores. For her Post-doc, Daria aimed at applying her expertise in quantitative cell biology to the field of host-pathogen interaction. She hence joined the “Pathogenesis of Vascular infections” Unit headed by Guillaume Duménil at Institut Pasteur. The focus of this team is Neisseria meningitidis, a gram-negative bacterium able to infect the human microvasculature, leading to severe pathologies such as septicaemia and meningitis. In Guillaume's lab, Daria discovered that aggregates of meningococci behave as an active viscous liquid thanks to intermittent attractions between bacteria, and that these mechanical properties are important to adapt to the vessel geometry for an efficient vascular colonization. Last year, Daria obtained an Inserm CR position in the same team to continue working on the forces at play during meningococcal infection.

Jean-Christophe Baret 

JCB is Professor at the Univ. Bordeaux and group leader at the CNRS-CRPP-UMR5031. Since 2016 he is Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. JCB contributed to the development of droplet-based microfluidic systems over the past 15 years for quantitative biology at the single cell level and high-throughput screening. Over the past 5 years he developed microfluidic methods for bottom-up synthetic biology, a soft matter-based approach of the construction and engineering of artificial cells.