Workshop Frontiers in Science at SR facilities

Ariane Briegel from Pasteur Institute (France) leads the Integrative Structural Cell Biology Lab. The unit is interested in understanding how microbes interact with their environment on a structural level, addressing questions such as how cells can actively seek out their preferred environmental niches, how they can evade toxins and predators, how they interact with phages, each other and with host tissue, and how they can adapt to thrive in fluctuating environments. To gain insight into the structure and function of the molecular complexes underlying these behaviors, we use cryo-electron tomography to directly visualize microbes in their native state at resolutions capable of examining individual proteins.

Henry N. Chapman from DESY (Germany) is the director of  the Centre for Free Electron Laser Science and leads the Coherent Imaging Group.  He has made numerous contributions to the fields of X-ray coherent diffraction imaging and phase retrieval, time-resolved coherent X-ray imaging and instrumentation using intense X-ray pulses. He is a pioneer of the diffraction before destruction technique that allows to analyze biological samples.

Veerle Cnudde from Univ. Utrecht (Netherlands) & Ghent Univ. (Belgium) leads the Pore-scale Processes in Geomaterials Research Group. She specializes in non-destructive imaging of geomaterials and has a strong expertise in real-time imaging of processes in the pore space. She also focuses on stone conservation and deterioration related to Cultural and Natural Heritage.

Stefan Eisebitt from the Technische Universität Berlin (Germany) is the director of the Max-Born-Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy. His group investigates the switching behavior of magnetic nanostructures, e.g. for applications in novel magnetic data storage media. His research interest is in ultrafast manipulation of magnetization and novel imaging and scattering methods with coherent radiation and short wavelength. 

Christine Joblin from the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (France). She is a director of research for the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), astrochemist, who uses spectroscopy to study photodissociation and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in cosmic dust. Beyond her experimental and observational work, she also contributed to the first clear finding of buckminsterfullerene in a meteorite, a ureilite that exploded over the Nubian Desert in late 2008.

Andreas Schaefer from the Francis Crick Institute (UK) leads the Sensory Circuits and neurotechnology Lab. The human brain is exceptionally complex. It’s packed with billions of nerve cells that are constantly communicating, sending and receiving electrical signals that result in thoughts, actions and memories. Figuring out how such complex behaviours arise from the combined actions of individual nerve cells is the greatest challenge in neuroscience. To make things simpler, his group is studying one specific part of the brain known as the olfactory bulb, which is responsible for smelling. Nerve cells in the olfactory bulb receive signals from the nose, triggered by smelly chemicals, and process this information to create a response – for example, moving towards delicious-smelling food, moving away from unpleasant rotting odours, or being attracted to the scent of a potential mate.

Odile Stéphan from Univ. Paris-Saclay (France) has managed the electron microscopy team at LPS - Orsay Solid State Physics Laboratory (STEM) since 2009 and coordinates TEMPOS (Transmission Electron Microscopy at Palaiseau Orsay). Her research interests span from growth mechanisms to optical and electronic properties of various nanostructures and nanomaterials. She focuses on the development and the use of Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy in a Transmission Electron Microscope and derived innovative spectroscopy techniques to probe at the nanometer scale the structural electronic and optical properties of original nanostructures like nanotubes and related nanostructures, nanophotonics objects, molecular magnets and to explore new physics phenomena at low dimensions (plasmon coupling, electron magnetic field confinement and exaltation). For more than twenty years, she has been on an extraordinary quest within the nanoworld, helping to design, with her team, a unique instrument and innovative technology which allows researchers to explore matter like never before. She was recently elected to the French Academy of Science.

Bert Weckhuysen from Univ. Utrecht (Netherlands) leads the Inorganic chemistry and catalysis Group. “Operando spectroscopy” pushes technological advances to enable imaging catalysis at macro, meso and micro scales, from the reactor down to interactions between single atoms and molecules. This term refers to a specialized form of in situ spectroscopy, in which measurements take place under realistic catalytic conditions of high temperature and pressure, empowering us to study catalysts in all their complexity and heterogeneity. Only this way can we accumulate enough knowledge to rationally design more efficient catalyst materials which, on one hand, are necessary to produce energy and materials for the quickly increasing human population in a sustainable manner and, on the other hand, will help us to reduce the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

Synchrotron SOLEIL, Saint-Aubin

• John BOZEK 
• Valérie BRIOIS
• Alessandro COATI
• Nicolas GUIGNOT 
• Frédéric JAMME
• Denis MENUT
• Laurent NAHON
• Eva PEREIRO 
• Jean-Pascal RUEFF
• Amina TALEB
• Laurent TRANCHANT

Synchrotron SOLEIL, Saint-Aubin

• Isabelle BIDOU 
• Mary-Anna DESTERMES 
• Camille ENJOMMET 
• Frédérique FRAISSARD 
• Angéla LAMBERT
• Eva PEREIRO 
• Véronique SCHWEITZER 
• Amina TALEB

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