Experimental techniques proficiency
Rheometry
ViscosimetryOscillatory rheology
Expertise on soft dispersed systems such as emulsions and suspensions
Good knowledge of Anton Paar RheoCompass software
Tensile experiments
Tack/JKR adhesion testingPre-notch fracture propagation
Traction-Compression
X-ray scattering
WAXD, SAXSExperience on analysis of X-ray scattering on polymers
Confocal microscopy
Tribology
3-pins on diskFormation
Biophysics MD, Université Paris Diderot
Basics in biocell, neurosciences, statistical physics, biophysics, soft matter, active matter, optical imagery and non-linear dynamic physics.Engineering MD with specialization in Physical Chemistry, ESPCI
Solid lab work practice, with 15h/week training during two years.Wide array of scientific subjects studied in depths, ranging from physiology to statistical physics, with an insistance on soft matter sciences and a specialization in physical-chemistry.
I am proficient in the following art and design softwares:
I am trained in the following languages:
Research experience
PDRA:
Structure-rheology and tribology-texture link for soy-cow blended drinks
IHAC team, SayFood, AgroParisTech, INRAE
PhD:
Rheology of solid emulsions
MMOI team, LPS Orsay
Internships:
Magnetic microgels for single-cell study in droplet microfluidics
MMBM lab, Institut Curie
Cyclic fatigue of tough double network elastomers
SIMM lab, ESPCI
Morphology - mechanical properties of polypropylene pipes as a function of the extrusion speed
SABIC Limbourg
Other work experiences
Science communication at Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie
Presentation of different scientific concepts to a wide audience through simple and participative experiments, conception of new presentations, participation to nationwide outreach events such as Fête de la Science or Nuit des Etoiles.PhD project
Rheology of solid emulsions
MMOI team, LPS lab, Université Paris-Saclay
2020 - now
My PhD project focuses on systems that we call "solid emulsions", in between emulsions and reinforced composites. They are polymer emulsions whose continuous phase is crosslinked in order to obtain a dispersion of liquid droplets within a solid elastic matrix. Much in the same way that emulsions show unexpected flow properties such as an elastic modulus arising from the mix of two liquids, which is directly dependent on the different phases, the aim of my solid emulsions is to create a composite whose rheology can be easily tuned. In particular, I aim at decoupling the storage and loss moduli (or simply put, the elasticity and viscosity of the composite) with regards to the mixing parameters.
Such a finely tunable system would be interesting, between other applications, in the medicine field to create casts that could allow slow movements in order for instance to wash the body under, but could solidify in an instant to protect against shocks with a shear-thickening dispersed phase.
To carry out this project, I am finding various methods to generate stable and reproducible samples, and proceed with characterization of both their structure through mostly microscopy techniques, and of their mechanical performances through rheology, tensile and adhesion tests.
The problem of inclusion systems has been an issue of interest for soft matter scientists for over five decades, here is a bit of literature to go further:
J. F. Palierne, Rheologica Acta, vol. 29, no 3, p. 204‑214, 1990
M. Krieger et T. J. Dougherty, Transactions of the Society of Rheology,
vol. 3, no 1, p. 137‑152, 1959Mahaut et al., 2008, Journal of Rheology, 52, 287
R. W. Style, R. Tutika, J. Y. Kim, M. D. Bartlett,
Advanced Functional Materials, 2020, 31
Science communication and outreach work
In parallel to my research work, I am also a presenting scientist at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, a scientific outreach museum in Paris. My work consists in presenting scientific fields and experiments to a wide audience from a catalogue. We talk about fundamental scientific concepts such as light combination to create colors, as well as subjects linked to the current events, with a cycle of serious games on sustainability and the Anthropocene, or more recently crowd effects and voting following the presidential elections. I also take part in events such as "Science Infuse" during which I presented my research project through fun simple experiments, or "la Nuit des Etoiles" which aims at popularizing hobby astronomy.
The Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie is not my first outreach experience. I was previously a member of EPICS, the science popularization organization of the students of ESPCI. We took part in annual scientific events, and most notably organized an exhibition at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in 2018, starting from scratch by obtaining fundings and designing a scenography with students from ENSAD. During a week, we showed through interactive experiments the research done at ESPCI, both historical findings and recent developments.
Thanks to the priviledged relationship of our team senior scientist, Frederic Restagno, with French television, I also took part in the French outreach TV show e=M6, where I studied the mechanical resistance of toilet paper in a report of waste.
![](https://www.google.com/images/icons/product/drive-32.png)
Research internship
Magnetic microgels for single-cell study in droplet microfluidics
MMBM team, IPGG, Institut Curie
Spring 2020
Droplet microfluidics allows for precise experiments on small volumes, which makes it a choice candidate for single cell experiment. In order to study several parameters on a single cell, which is to say to practice so called multi-omnic experiments, an interesting idea is to use tweezers to displace cells from one microreactor (i.e. a droplet containing one reactive) to another. I was formulating microgels containing magnetic nanoparticles on which cells could be grafted, and thus which could be used with magnetic tweezers in a microfluidic apparatus.
The difficulty of this internship resided in the need for a sufficient magnetic response from the microgels, which was especially complex to achieve in only a three months internship. By the end of the spring I had found a possible way to magnetize the gel and was about to do some characterization of the magnetic field when we went into lockdown due to COVID and I had to stop all my experiments.
Research internship
Cyclic fatigue crack propagation in double network elastomers
SIMM lab, ESPCI
Summer 2019
Under cyclic fatigue, i.e. the repeated use of a material, elastomers tend to break at a critical stress that is much lower than under monotonous loading. Furthermore, in the presence of a pre-existing crack of sufficient length, the crack propagation rate of materials of similar toughness may differ by orders of magnitude for the same applied energy release rate. Hence, different dissipation mechanisms are at play during cyclic loading.
Double network elastomers have been engineered to resist fatigue fracture better. Their filler network controls the maximal extensibility and elasticity, and the crosslinking acts as sacrificial bonds which introduce purely elastic dissipation in the material. This makes them good model to study elastic dissipation under cyclic fatigue.
During my internship, I was studying several samples of double network methylacrylate elastomers with different crosslinking concentration in the filler network.
The experiments consisted in choosing the ideal conditions to work under to observe only elastic dissipation and no heating or rate dependency of the material, by going above the glass transition temperature, using DSC and uniaxial traction, then obtaining the critical tear stress under monotonous loading and finally doing several fatigue experiments at different fractions of that critical stress to obtain the crack propagation rate in pre-notched samples. To explain the crack propagation rate results, I also studied the samples in confocal microscopy, thanks to a mechanophore marker.
Industry internship
Structure-performance relationship of polypropylene pipes
as a function of extrusion speed
as a function of extrusion speed
SABIC Limburg
July - December 2018
Isotactic polypropylene pipes are semi-crystalline. They are extruded through a die and solidified in their shape by spraying room-temperature water on the outside of the pipe. This leads to a temperature gradient within the wall of the pipe which as a consequence leads to a crystallization rate gradient within that wall. It has been observed that pipes could show different mechanical properties depending notably on the extrusion throughput, and there was a need to understand where those different performances came from in order to better control the production of plastic materials.
My internship consisted on characterizing the microstructure of several pipe samples made under different conditions, using DSC to get the crystallized fraction, and WAXD and SAXS to obtain the polymorphism of the crystallized parts as well as the orientation of the spherulites. A second part of that internship consisted in comparing the structure results to mechanical performance benchmarks to explain the behavior of the pipes, kicking off my interest in the link between microstructure and macro behavior of soft materials.