Leda just left LAI to start a post-doc in Pierre-François Lenne team at IBDM. We are already missing her and her good humor (as well as her Italian food!) and wish her the utmost success as she advances in her scientific career!

Each year, the CNRS awards talented women and men, support staff in research, whose creativity, mastery and innovative flair, contributes to pushing knowledge and to the excellence of French research, with the “médaille de cristal” (crystal medal) 🏅.
We are proud to announce that our engineer Martine Pelicot was chosen as one of the recipients of the 2022 edition. Congratulations!
LAI is happy to welcome the new batch of PhDs joining us this year.
Valentine Seveau will be using micro-fluidic techniques and micro-patterning technologies (PRIMO Alveole) to study the guidance of T cell lymphocytes mediated by integrins and cellular adhesion molecules on a substrate, also known as haptotaxis. She’ll be co-directed by Olivier Théodoly and Marie-Pierre Valignat.
Elodie Lafargue will be trying to characterize for the first time the rest structure of voltage-dependent channels at the molecular level as well as the dynamics of electrical signal transduction when opening or closing the transmembrane channel thanks to two novel breakthroughs in High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy (HS-AFM) technology. Elodie will be supervised by Ignacio Casuso.
Rémy Torro and Lama Awada also joined us through the CENTURI PhD program. Rémy will be co-directed by Laurent Limozin at LAI and Kheya Sengupta at CINAM, he’ll be using reflection interference contrast microscopy (RICM) and deep learning-based techniques, as a systematic approach to perform 3D reconstructions of cell membranes at the interface with substrates. Lama on the other hand, is supervised by Philippe Robert at LAI and Pierre Milpied at CIML and she’ll be trying to characterize the nature of physical cues driving antibody affinity maturation in B cell immune responses using the laminar flow chamber in 2D while simultaneously integrating parallel analysis of transcriptome and antibody genes sequences at single-cell resolution.
Welcome everyone and we wish you a successful journey!
Dalia El Arawi started her LAI journey during COVID19 lockdown on the physical and computational aided design of bispecific antibodies for cancer immunotherapy under the supervision of Laurent Limozin. Her main objective will consist of testing bispecific antibodies using in vitro Antibody Dependent Cell Cytotoxicity mediated by NK cells employing TIRFM and RICM.


The lab is excited to have Arnauld Sergé joining its researchers staff. Arnauld is an associate professor in Biology and Physics at AMU. His research is centered on membrane dynamics using single-molecule microscopy and image analysis, with his current project focusing on « Dynamic videonanoscopy of immuno-cancer interactions ».
The LAI team celebrated Christmas with authentic dishes from all around the world prepared by our international team. Food, music, and good company were the lab’s last hurrah before the end of an incredible year!

LAI will have two upcoming visiting students:
Eider Nunez Viadero who comes from the Biofisika institute in Bilbao (Spain).
She will stay for three months, till December 3rd, and do high speed AFM on a potassium channel with Arin Marchesi.
Clotilde Nodet, pharmacy students in her fifth year, will be doing a part-time six month elective until february 28th. She will work on effect of Natalizumab on lymphocyte adhesion and migration with Olivier Théodoly, Marie-Pierre Valignat and Philippe Robert in La Conception.
Welcome!
LAI member Leda Lacaria joined the summer school “Mechanobiology of polarized cells” in Physics School in Les Houches, France presenting a poster: “How αvβ3 and α5β1 integrins influence the mechanical properties of melanoma M21 cells?”
Authors: Leda Lacaria, Wolfgang H. Goldmann, José Luis Alonso, Felix Rico.
She enjoyed both great Mont Blanc landscape and mechanobiology (see pics below)!
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