Latest News
October 2025
Congrats to Vivien Willems and Benjamín Oliva on their Poster prizes at the ISMC 2025 in Crete!
Well done!
The Soft BioColloids group attended the International Soft Matter Conference 2025 in Crete. It was a great pleasure to participate with:
- 2 contributed talks by Dr. Villalobos and Dr. Chelur
- 4 Posters by Willems, Fojo, Oliva and Alvarez
- 1 Keynote by L. Alvarez
We spend a week of exciting scientific and personal exchanges!
September 2025
Madison Lylte and Ana Cazorla have briefly joined the group for their respective PhD stays and ongoing collaborations.
Madison is working with Prof. Brennan Sprinkle (Colorado School of Mines). Together, they are building a model to explain the sticking phenomena we observed with the GUVs under AC fields. She will stay for a week to see in real-time experiments and brainstorm about the physics of the system.
Ana is here for a month to work on anisotropic active particles. We are excited to have her back for this challenging but exciting project!
July 2025
We are delighted to see Vivien's article entitled "Run-and-Tumble dynamics of active Janus vesicles" featured on the cover of Soft Matter. Congrats to Vivien for this amazing work :)
May 2025
We are very happy to welcome Dipam to the group! He joined the group to work on the reconstitution and fabrication of the vesicles and scrape through the fluctuation driven by thermal perturbation and colloidal particles. To learn more about him, please visit the group members section.
José's article entitled "Field-driven reversible networks from colloidal
rods"has been published in Soft Matter and displayed as a back cover artwork in the journal! Congrats José and collaborators!
April 2025
Vivien has presented her thesis work in the ''Journées de l'Ecole Doctoral" (Doctoral School Day University of Bordeaux), performing in the beautiful Haut Carré amphitheater! Congrats Vivien!
March 2025
SigSynCell consortium meet at the Heidelberg University, were we meet all the DCs and PIs together for the first time. José got to present the very first preliminary results with our reconfigurable GUVs.
Thanks Kerstin Göpfrich for hosting us!
Vivien and Laura spent a week at UC Berkeley trying DNA-orgigami in Janus GUVs in the context of the collaboration with Prof. G. Tikhomoriv funded by the France-Berkeley Fund. Thanks for the welcoming!
February 2025
Time to test our team spirit skills in a fun and original way: solving the mysteries of a Scape Game. We not only finished the game (despite the complications) but also managed to fix clues that were not correct in the room :)
It was an amazing bonding experience for all of us!
January 2025
We are happy to welcome Dr. Cristian Villalobos to the group! He will be working on lipid membranes and their interaction with catalytic particles, in collaboration with Prof. Andela Saric (ISTA).
September 2024
Welcome to Jose Fojo to the group! He will be working as a PhD candidate on the SynSygCell DN MCSA Action on reconfigurable and signalling synthetic cells.
Welcome to Dr. Sarika Chelur to the group! She will be working on the dynamics of catalytic particles and non-reciprocal interactions.
May 2024
Welcome to Benjamín Oliva to the group! He will be working on the behaviour of lipid monolayers at water interfaces in the presence of microscopic pollutants, in collaboration with Dr. Chapel and Prof. Ivo Buttinoni.
April 2024
The workshop 'Transport Properties in Soft Matter Systems' organized by Laura and Vittoria Sposinni and celebrated at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute in Vienna was a success! Thanks for all the great contributions!
March 2024
Kick-off of the European Doctoral Network SynSigCell. What an exciting 4 years ahead working with an extraordinary group of scientists!
February 2024
We are launching our lipid vesicles into microgravity! NyMex is a project in collaboration with Prof. Ivo Buttinoni, Prof. Thomas Voigtmann and Prof. Jens Hauslager. NyMex will be launched in the Mapheus 14 Campaign, organized by DLR (GE).
November 2023
June 2023
July 2023
The project MEMSPACE has been founded by the DLR, in the context of an International collaboration with Prof. Ivo Buttinoni and Prof. Thomas Voigtmann.
The project Appollo has been founded by the ANR-DFG PRCI, in collaboration with Dr. Jean-Paul Chapel (CRPP) and Prof. Ivo Buttinoni.
The project MYMESIS has been founded by the Agence National de Recherche, in the context of an ANR JCJC. The group will open a postdoc position soon!
In the context of the ITN Evo-Drops, Laura was invited to give a talk at the last meeting in Bordeaux.
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May 2023
Laura will give a talk on the ACS Colloids 2023 at North Caroline State University on cell-mimetic active systems. Do not miss it if you are around!
April 2023
Vivien has won the poster prize in the Workshop Interchall (Rome) with her work on Active Vesicles. Congrats again for her great work and amazing poster display!
January 2023
We welcome Vivien Willems to the group as a Ph.D. student! We are so happy to have her back on a very exciting project!
November 2022
Vivien Willems has successfully defended her Master's thesis in collaboration with the Soft and Living Materials group at ETH Zürich. Vivien worked on the fabrication and dynamical characterization of active Janus vesicles. Congrats Vivien!
November 2022
Laura will attend a Gordon Research Conference on Colloidal, Macromolecular, and Polyelectrolyte Solutions in Ventura (CA). She will act as a discussion leader in one of the sessions at the prior Gordon Research Seminar! Congrats!
October 2022
Recently accepted paper in collab with our colleagues Prof. Ivo Buttinoni, L.Caprini, F.Schwarzendahl, and Hartmut Lowen. Can Janus colloids optically be 'symmetric'? By matching the refractive index of their materials, they exhibit similar dynamics to spheres in an optical trap. What if they are active? Check the article for more info.
September 2022
Laura and Vivien are attending the Active Assemblies Minisimposioum (Leipzig)
Laura is presenting as an invited speaker her work on responsive active colloids, and Vivien will present her first poster on Active Giant Vesicles!
Recently accepted paper in collab with Dr. Kailie Xie, Prof. Hamid Kellay et.al. We show how droplets with Janus particles inside become less deformable due to the effective tension coming from the colloids' activity
April 2022
Laura will give a talk on Wednesday at 15:30 at the Physics of Life Summer School in Edinburgh https://www.physicsoflife.org.uk/physics-of-life-summer-school-2022.html
We welcome Vivien Willems to our group! She will work on soft active systems during her Master thesis, in collaboration with the group of Prof. Eric Drufesne in ETH Zurich.
January 2022
Laura got Tenure Track at the University of Bordeaux and Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal (CNRS).
December 2021
Recent accepted paper by our collegue Dr. Minghan Hu in which we actuated his multifunctional supracapsules with magnetic fields. Congrats Minghan!