2023

We wish our friends, former students and collaborators all around the world a positive, healthy and happy new year !

End of the year and goodbyes

Last Friday, we had our traditional end of the year group dinner, with former, actual and “about to leave” members of the lab. Indeed, it was also the occasion to say goodbye to Soh Kushida, who left one day later for Japan, where he will work at the Institute of Materials Science, Tsukuba University, but also to his fellow, Yoichi Sasaki, who will also leave us at the end of the month. On his side, Yoichi has been hired as assistant professor in the Kimizuka lab, at the Center for Molecular Systems in Kyushu University.  Both Soh and Yoichi have been friendly colleagues who were involved in the social life of the team, thus contributing to his good atmosphere, and both worked on new and demanding research projects that recently bear fruits, no doubt that they will come back to finish some experiments !

Good luck to them !

Happy birthday ISIS !

On December 9, in 2002, ISIS building was inaugurated, in the presence of some officials and state representatives,  but also through a beautiful scientific symposium including François Diederich, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes and Harmut Michel. We are thus celebrating its 20th birthday today. The official celebration will take place later on in early 2023, but in the meantime, happy birthday ISIS, with a special thought for his founder Jean-Marie Lehn.

Welcome Sujith !

Since one week, we have the pleasure to have a new postdoctoral researcher among us, Dr Sujith Meleppatt. Sujith comes from Kerala, at the very south of India, and did his master in chemistry in Calicut. Then he continued with a phD at IISER Thiruvananthapuram, studying the chirooptical properties of molecules and nanomaterials under the supervision of Pr Georges Thomas. Welcome to him !

Ce n’est qu’un au revoir….

After the recent phD defenses, two more freshly graduated students left the lab for continuing their postdoctoral studies in the Netherlands :

– Jérôme Gautier was hired as postdoctoral researcher at AMOLF, Amsterdam, in the group of, Erik Garnett, Nanoscale Solar Cells

– Kripa Joseph, after a break in India, will start her postdoc in a few weeks in Eindhoven University of Technology, in Bert Meijer’ group.

Both of them spent more than 4 years among us, as they started as master students and were highly appreciated for their dedication in their research projects, but also for their human qualities. No doubt that they will succeed in their new positions and we wish them all the best !

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Jérôme and Kripa after their phD defense (Photos Minghao Li)

 

One more departure…

After two years in the lab, our colleague Sudipta Saha left this week-end for a new postdoctoral position in the group of Pävi Törmä, in Aalto University, Finland. If he continues like this, next one will be on Svalbard islands… More seriously, Sudipta contributed efficiently to the projects he was involved in, in particular the tricky setup of a new Mueller experiment in the UV, and we will miss his competences, but also his constant good mood and his smile. Good luck to him !

 

Let’s rock solute

Our most recent publication appeared one week ago, in the “ASAP” section of Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. In this work, we have developed a ROKE (resonant optical Kerr effect) spectroscopy setup to monitor the reorientational relaxation time of a solute molecule into a solvent, with a high accuracy and sensitivity. The key experimental factors were to tune the pump and the probe laser beams to the resonant wavelength of the solute, in order to amplify the signal, as well as the heterodyne detection, allowing to determine the relaxation time accurately. The accepted version can be downloaded from our publications page.

20 years ago…

… a swiss journal, Chemische Rundschau, interviewed Thomas Ebbesen after the publication of our paper in Science review. At that time, we were a very small team, located rue de l’Université in the old building of Physics Faculty, as ISIS building was under construction. This is probably our first group picture ever and  founding it back on my shelves gave me the idea to create a page for our old group pictures. Have fun !

Bem-vindo Arthur !

It will soon be three weeks that we have the pleasure to welcome a new brasilian student in the lab, Arthur Fonseca. He is currently doing a phD at the Physics Institute of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, under the supervision of Pr. Paulo Maia Neto. He is doing experimental and theoretical studies on vortex beams and light-matter interaction in optical tweezers. Arthur will stay 6 months among us, welcome to him !