MEMS - People

Christian Bergaud

Christian received the engineer degree in physics from the National Institute of Applied Sciences, Lyon, France, in 1991 and the Ph.D. degree in electronics from the National Institute of Applied Sciences, Toulouse, France, in 1994. Between 1995 and 1996, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Tokyo where he studied the development of microsystems dedicated to nanocharacterization. From January 1997 to March 2004, he was a National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) researcher with the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS), Toulouse. From April 2004 to March 2006, he was Director of the Laboratory for Integrated MicroMechatronics Systems (LIMMS), a joint laboratory of the French CNRS and the University of Tokyo. He is curres to design micro- and nanosystems for biological applications and soft robotics. He launched a few years ago research activities on soft neural probes for chronic applications and artificial muscles.ntly senior researcher with the LAAS, his research involves the development of novel approache

Bernard Legrand

Bernard graduated in analog and digital microelectronics from the engineering college ISEN-Lille in 1996, and simultaneously received his MSc degree in physics of electron and microwave devices. He was awarded his PhD on September 29th 2000 from the University of Lille for his work on the fabrication and characterization of semiconducting nanostructures. He was appointed in 2001 to a permanent CNRS research staff position in the Nano and Microsystems group (NAM6) at IEMN, Lille. He defended his habilitation thesis in 2012, and he moved to Toulouse in 2013 where he joined the MEMS group at LAAS. His research interests are currently focused on electromechanical transduction for M/NEMS including optomechanics, M/NEMS resonators for high-speed AFM instruments, and M/NEMS devices for ultra-low power computing. Bernard is a co-author of 5 patents and 130+ communications in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences.

Vincent Mansard

Vincent is a researcher in physics of materials. He is specialized in soft matter, rheology and microfluidics. He received, in 2009, a Master's degree in fundamental physics from Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon), France. In 2012, he obtained a Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the Laboratory of Future, Bordeaux, France.  He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Pr. T.M. Squires in the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). He was recruited as a permanent scientist in November 2016 by the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).  He is currently working in the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS), Toulouse. His work mostly focuses on the development of a new types of artificial muscles called Osmotic Muscles and using swelling gels.

Constandina Arvanitis

Dina received her Ph.D. in Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology from the University of Toronto in 2004. Her thesis, focused on protein-lipid assemblies in the myelin, revealed the presence of the estrogen receptor protein in myelin sheath. She went on to study the role of the amyloid protein in Alzheimer's disease models during her postdoctoral studies at McGill University. In 2011, she entered the CNRS to research the nervous system with a focus on cortical development and the neuronal basis of inter-organ communication. Over the last few years, her research has focused on the neurocardiac axis. She has demonstrated how the heart influences neuron functioning in the vagus, the spine, the medulla oblongata and ultimately the cortex in murine models of cardiac dysfunction. Her findings have contributed to the growing body of evidence supporting the fact that organ function is dependent on interorgan homeostasis and feedback loops whose dysregulation drives pathophysiological processes. To overcome the challenges associated with the complexity of in vivo systems,  she has embarked on the development of organoid platforms to enable systemic approaches to model crosstalk between the nervous system and the heart. Her long term goals include the development of the first real-time system to study the impact of modulating the frequency of low-magnitude mechanical stimulation on neuronal activity.

Ali Maziz

Ali is a full CNRS Researcher at the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS). He has received his PhD in 2014 from both the Institute of Materials at CY-Paris University and the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN-CNRS) in France, which was about developing conductive polymer microactuators for microsystems and bioelectronics applications. During his PhD period, he has received several grants from the European Cooperation in Science and Technology as a visiting researcher in both the Intelligent Materials and Systems Laboratory (Tartu, Estonia) and Linkoping University (Sweden) to develop electroactive organic materials for artificial muscles and soft robotics. Between 2014 and 2017, he joined Prof. Anthony Turner’s group at the Biosensors and Bioelectronics Centre (Sweden) to conduct research on artificial textile muscles and Lab on chip microdevices for cellular mechanotransduction. In 2018, he became a full CNRS researcher in the department of Micro Nano Bio Technologies at LAAS in the field of implantable flexible electrodes for brain electrophysiology and neuroelectrochemical recordings. His current research activities include biomaterials, biosensors, soft materials for neural interfaces and bioelectronics.

Liviu Nicu

Liviu Nicu was born in 1973 in Bucharest. After completing his master of electrical engineering at the Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse (France) in 1997, he joined the Integrated Microsystems Group at the LAAS (Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems) of Toulouse where he obtained his PhD in 2000 into the Micromechanical Structures field. From 2001 to 2003, he was R&D Engineer at Thales Avionics, Valence (France). His activities focused onto the development of micromechanical sensors for the civil and military navigation applications. In 2003 he got back to LAAS as a full time CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research) researcher where he currently works in two main research fields: the development of (1) new resonant bio(chemical)sensors using M(N)EMS technologies and of (2) investigation of innovative ways to actuate and sense the motion of M(N)EMS.

Daisuke Saya

Daisuke Saya grew up in Shin-Yurigaoka, Kawasaki. He studied at Precision Machinery Engineering, The University of Tokyo. He was a visiting student at Laboratoire de Physique et Métrologie des Oscillateurs LPMO (L’institut FEMTO-ST), Besançon. He was at Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo. Then, he joined to Laboratoire d’Analyse et d’Architecture des Systèmes, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse. He was once at LIMMS-CNRS/IIS, The University of Tokyo. Now he is in the team Microsystèmes électromécaniques MEMS in LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse. His research is based on micro-nano mechanical resonators in both top-down and bottom-up.

Thierry Leïchlé

Thierry Leïchlé received his BS degree in engineering physics and his MS degree in microelectronics from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (Toulouse, France) in 1999. He then joined Prof. Mark Allen’s group at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA) to conduct research on resonant micromachined magnetic sensors and obtained an MS degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 2002. He returned to France to work toward a PhD degree and developed a MEMS-based patterning tool for the local functionalization of surfaces at the Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS-CNRS). After graduating from the University of Toulouse in 2006, he joined the Nanobioscience group at the Academia Sinica (Taipei, Taiwan) for a post-doctoral stay where he studied biomolecular interactions in nanochannels. He joined CNRS as a research fellow at LAAS-CNRS in 2010 and he founded the MEMS team in 2016 that he led until 2019. He is now temporarily with the Georgia Tech-CNRS international research lab in Atlanta and works on MEMS and biosensors.

Clément Cointe

Clément Cointe obtained in 2019 his MSc in electrical engineering and bio-medical engineering from École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay (ENS Paris-Saclay, France). During his Masters, he also obtained the French Agrégation in industrial engineering sciences with a specialization in electrical engineering. He joined LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France, in 2019 as a PhD student in MEMS team where he is currently working with Dr. Ali Maziz and Dr. Christian Bergaud. His work is focused on fabrication and characterization of ultrathin flexible neural probes made with silk fibroin.

Refik Barış Yılmaz

Refik obtained his BSc degree in Chemical Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara/Turkey in 2017. He obtained his MSc degree in Chemical Engineering  from METU with the thesis “Development of core/shell structured composite nanofibers via coaxial electrospinning method” in 2019. He joined MEMS team as a PhD student in 2020 where he is currently working with Dr. Vincent Mansard on stimuli responsive polymeric hydrogels for development of soft actuator based MEMS. His research is focused on design, synthesis, characterization and fabrication of polymeric hydrogel based soft actuator systems for artificial muscle and smart tactile display applications.

Aleksandra Markovic

Aleksandra obtained her BSc in Electrical Engineering and Informational Technologies from Technical University of Vienna in 2016 where she did her thesis on SAW sensors for high temperature applications. She obtained her MSc in Microengineering from the EPFL in 2019. Within the scope of her Masters she spent 6 months in Sensirion Technologies AG working on particulate matter sensors and one year at Harvard University, where she did her thesis work on the development of a MEMS-based printhead for a novel micro-droplet-fabrication technology (now AcousicaBio Inc.), resulting in a patent. She joined MEMS team as a PhD student in 2021 where she is currently working with Bernard Legrand within an ANR project "ZerOuate". Her work is focused on FEM analysis, design, fabrication and characterization of ultra-low-power logic gates operating in adiabatic regime.

Elise Pierre

Elise Pierre completed a French-German double-degree and received an engineer degree in Mechanics from the National Institute of Applied Sciences, Lyon, France, in 2021 and a master degree in General mechanics from the Karlsruher Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2021. During her master, she specialized in Microsystems Technologies and Medical Engineering. She joined the MEMS team in 2020 to complete her master Thesis on the design of atraumatic self-bending cochlear implant electrode array based on swelling actuation of natural silk hydrogel. She continued working in MEMS-Team as a PhD student in April 2021. She is currently taking part in the European project ‘EMAPS-Cardio’ which aims to develop a new platform for growth and maturation of cardiac microtissues using electromechanically active materials.

Onkar Kulkarni

Onkar obtained his MSc in Aerospace Materials Design, Manufacturing and Innovation management (AeroMat) from École des Mines d’Albi- Carmaux, France in 2020 and has a bachelor's degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Nagpur University of Maharashtra in India. During his internship at Aerospace Valley, Toulouse the aim was to collaborate and assign support as well as scientific decryption of R & D projects coming from different programs of the European Commission such as the Green Deal under the H2020 program which will propel and boost the ecosystem of green technologies and green societies in Europe but not just limited to Europe. Onkar joined CNRS in September 2021 as a Ph. D. student and works between two labs LCC and LAAS on the project titled "Microsystems for thermal energy harvesting based on a thermally induced phase transition".

Jeanne Perrussel

Jeanne Perrussel studied in the field of materials, completing a materials chemistry license and a materials engineering masters at the University of Paul Sabatier in Toulouse. Being interested in the field of health and materials, she had the opportunity to do her internships on biomaterials for bone regeneration.
She joined the MEMS team in 2022 to carry out her thesis on biomaterials which consists of the manufacturing and characterization of ultra-thin bioresorbable flexible neural probes under the supervision of Ali Maziz and Christian Bergaud.