Contributors to the France issue

Charles Baroud

Charles Baroud was born in Lebanon, in 1972. He received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, in 2001. His dissertation topic was turbulent flows under rotation. In 2002 he joined Ecole Polytechnique as maître de conférences. Since 2006 he has been professeur chargé de cours at the same institution. His current research interests are in the area of droplet microfluidics and its applications to lab on a chip technologies, in addition to fundamental research on multiphase flows in complex geometries.

Stéphanie Descroix

Stéphanie Descroix was born in France in 1975. She received a PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 2002 for research on capillary electrophoresis with non-aqueous solvents at Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris (Chimie-Paristech) – Université Paris 6, France. Then, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Orsay University. In 2004, she joined the Ecole Supérieure de Physique Chimie Industrielles (ESPCI-Paristech), Paris, France, as a CNRS fellow where she started research combining microfluidics and analytical sciences. Presently, she develops analytical and bioanalytical microdevices more particularly dedicated to separation sciences and diagnosis on chip based on magnetic nanoparticles.

Anne-Marie Haghiri-Gosnet

Anne-Marie Haghiri-Gosnet was born in Tours, in 1960. She received her engineering degree from ENSCP (Paris) in 1982 and her PhD in microelectronics in 1984. Joining CNRS in 1985, she developed the electron beam and X-ray nanolithographies in the “Nanostructures Group” at CNRS-L2M. Between 1997 and 2000, she joined the “Laboratory of Crystallography and Materials Science” (CRISMAT) in Caen, where she has initiated a theme “Nanodevices for Spin Electronics”. From 2001 as Research Director at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), she has been head of the magnetic oxides team of IEF (Orsay). Currently at CNRS-LPN (Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures) she is managing the NANOFLU “Microfluidics & Nanostructures for Chemistry & Biology” research group. This team develops innovative soft nanolithographies and processes of structuring of biocompatible material for the realisation of fluidic devices. Her current research interests concern the development of innovative biochips for early medical diagnosis based on on-chip protein preconcentration and separation. Finally, she is developing ultra-sensitive biosensing tools in fluidic circuits, such as networks of plasmonic nanostructures or integrated liquid microcavities. Honours and awards: 2005 medal Blondel from SEE (Paris), 2002 nanotechnology prize (Paris).

Benoit Ladoux

Benoit Ladoux was born in 1972 in France. With a background in Physics, he started his research career at the Curie Institute (Paris, France). During his diploma thesis in the laboratory Physico-Chimie Curie, he worked on single molecule biophysics on two main problems that combined statistical physics, microfabrication and molecular biology. He received his PhD degree in 2000 at Curie Institute in the group of Dr Jean-Louis Viovy. This motivated him to work in biophysics and apply microfabrication techniques to this field. After a post-doc on cell mechanics at the University Paris Diderot, he joined the biophysics team directed by Prof. François Gallet at the Laboratory Matière et Systèmes Complexes (University Paris Diderot & CNRS) as an assistant professor in 2001. He became a full professor at the University Paris Diderot in 2010. With Prof. Jean-Marc Di Meglio and Dr Pascal Hersen, he is in charge of a team that studies the cooperation between adhesion, bio-mechanical and bio-chemical signaling for the adaptation of living organisms to changes in their environment. His current research aims at understanding how eukaryotic cells interact with their environment, and to use this knowledge to control cell functions. Since 2008, he has been involved in the creation of the Mechanobiology Institute in Singapore directed by Prof. Michael P. Sheetz. He is currently visiting professor and Principal Investigator at the Mechanobiology Institute (Singapore) working on tissue mechanics.

Emmanuel Mignard

Emmanuel Mignard was born in France in 1973. He received his PhD in Polymers from the University of Pau in 2001. He joined the team of Prof. Wayne F. Reed at Tulane University (LA, USA) as a postdoctoral associate from 2001 to 2003, working in the development of novel instrumentations for the monitoring of polymerization reactions. He returned to France to take a CNRS research position in Rennes in 2004. He then moved to the Laboratory of the Future in 2008. His current research interests include the synthesis of (co)polymers by using intensified processes at the laboratory scale as well as the use of liquid water/supercritical carbon dioxide in micro- millifluidics toward a greener reaction medium.

Patrick Tabeling

Patrick Tabeling has been leader of the group MMN (Microfluidics MEMS and Nanostructures) since 2001. He occupied various positions in different laboratories: Visiting researcher in Chicago University (1984–1985), Chargé/Directeur de Recherches CNRS in the Department of Physics in ENS (1985–2001), visiting professor to UCLA, now Directeur de Recherches/Professor at ESPCI. He was professor chargé de cours at the Ecole Polytechnique (1996–2008). He is the author of 191 papers (114 in refereed journals), 9 patents (3100 citations, h factor 33), 65 invited talks in international conferences; he is divisional editor of Physical Review Letters, Associate Editor of Physics of Fluids and Biomicrofluidics, guest editor of CRAS and PNAS. He published the book entitled “An introduction to microfluidics” (Oxford University Press—a french version being edited by Belin in 2005).

Jean-Louis Viovy

Jean-Louis Viovy received his degrees in Chemical Physics at Ecole Normale Supérieure de St Cloud and University Paris-Sud, and a PhD in Polymer Science at Université Pierre et Marie Curie. The first part of his career was devoted to "soft matter" and polymer dynamics. He switched in the late eighties to biophysics, and contributed to the development of DNA electrophoresis theory and the study of DNA–protein interactions. In these two areas, he notably developed and used extensively single molecule experiments. In the last 15 years, he progressively intensified his activity in microfluidics and lab-on-chips, bringing into this field concepts from material sciences and soft matter, such as self-assembly, tailored polymers, colloids, polymer processing, and applying them to the development of microsystems for biology and medical diagnosis. Several technologies issued from this research are in commercial exploitation, such as the EMMA method for mutation detection, or the "FASTAB" technology (Fluigent). He is coauthor of about 170 peer-reviewed scientific articles, and founded at the Curie Institute the group "Macromolecules and Microsystems in Biology and Medicine” (MMBM).

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