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"Megakaryocytes and swimming droplets under confinement" by Mathilde Reyssat, Gulliver, ESPCI Paris
On March 20, 2026, from 12:00 to 13:00, we will have the pleasure of welcoming Mathilde Reyssat from ESPCI Paris for a seminar at the Solbosch campus. The talk will take place in room UB2.153, and will provide an opportunity to discover her research and engage with current topics in the field. We warmly invite students, researchers, and anyone interested to attend this seminar and take part in the discussion.
Microfluidics offers new ways to constrain microscopic objects and deform them using hydrodynamic flows. My research is focused on the use of simple microfluidic devices to answer questions in physics, physical chemistry and biology. The objects I study may vary, but they all involve soft interfacial matter. My presentation will focus on two objects of different natures: cells called megakaryocytes, which give rise to blood platelets, and microdroplets capable of self-propulsion. In both cases, microfluidic confinement transforms the objects: megakaryocytes attached to micro-pillars are subjected to stretching and shearing forces that lead to the deformation of their cytoplasm and the production of blood platelets in vitro under flow; swimming droplets, which propel themselves solely through interfacial stresses, undergo remarkable fragmentation under strong confinement. In these systems, geometric confinement at the microscopic scale makes it possible to probe matter through reversible or even irreversible deformations.