Mail: jean-francois.RUPPRECHT@univ-amu.fr

February 2019 – present | CNRS researcher & CENTURI group leader

2015-2018 | Postdoctoral fellow, Mechanobiology Institute, NUS (Singapore) with J. Prost. 

2012-2015 | Diploma thesis research in physics, Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France) with R. Voituriez & O. Bénichou and 8-month stay with L. Bocquet at the Laboratoire de Physique Statistique – ENS Paris. 

We work on the physics of active materials and aims at relating local energy consumption to global collective flows. Both in active nematics and smectics, we revealed abrupt transitions to turbulence, activity thresholds that are independent of system size, and the presence of flows in regimes that were previously thought to be stable (PRL 2022, 2023). We also developed numerical simulation tools for epithelial tissues with realistic dynamics (PNAS 2023, 2025), which predict the emergence of extreme mechanical stresses responsible for tissue rupture (Nat. Phys. 2022). I proposed a topological mechanism for tubulation in hydrocarbon-degrading bacterial biofilms, with strong impact in bioremediation (Science 2023). Finally, both to test our theories and to design new ones, we have developed AI tools to automatically track cellular events in image sequences of growing epithelial tissues.