Technology & Instrumentation for the Monitoring of Complex Systems

Responsable : Pierre JOSEPH

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Our department brings together 15 researchers and 20 PhD students, post-doctoral fellows or engineers with profiles of theoretical and experimental physics, biophysics, materials sciences, microfluidics and smart systems integration at the millimeter, micrometer and nanometer length scales.

Our goal is to design, model, and fabricate devices for the analysis and understanding of complex systems. These complex systems can be understood in a number of different ways, namely human beings in the context of their dynamic follow-up during sport efforts and falls detection, biomolecular reaction networks involved in oncology, biological fluids analysis for biomarkers detection, or wastewater analysis for the management of environmental threats. Our work relies on the momentum in engineering sciences towards more miniaturization and integration. It aims to meet the future societal needs in terms of human health and well-being, surveillance of environmental threats, and structure health monitoring. Our  pluri-disciplinary competencies are therefore at the nexus of engineering and condensed matter physics; they allow us to carry out translational works from the proof of concept to the implementation of a technology deployed in real environment.

These studies are carried out with the support of the micro- and nano-fabrication facility of LAAS with a clean room of ~1500 m2, which is part of the French network for advanced technology. We aim to constantly rejuvenize our technological solutions and integration strategies to produce state-of-the-art systems. We are keen to work with silicon but also with flexible materials for on-board electronics. We also take great benefits to work with the laboratory's biotechnology platform, which is fully equipped for optical or electronic systems as well as blood, cells or biomolecules manipulation.

 

ORGANIZATION OF RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

The department consists of three teams:

M3 : Multiscale Modeling of Materials - Contact : anne.hemeryck@laas.fr

MILE : Micro and NanoFluidics for Life Sciences and Environment – Contact : pjoseph@laas.fr

S4M : Smart Sensing and Systems Monitoring– Contact : ecampo@laas.fr

The head of the department is Aurélien Bancaud - Contact: aurelien.bancaud@laas.fr

APPLICATIONS

Elderly, frailty monitoring

Sports, Monitoring and Stress Monitoring

Automation

Microfluidics for genetic analysis

Lab-on-Chip and Model Systems

Water Quality

Modeling at the atomic scale

Flexibility of biomolecules

For 2017, we had chosen to address four  scientific challenges to present some of our on-going research activities.