A brain stroke occurs when the flow of oxygen-rich blood to a portion of the brain is obstructed or when a blood vessel leaks or bursts. It is the second leading cause of death in Europe, and 60% of the survivors have different degrees of disability, with a socio-economic impact of the first magnitude for...
The SENSEI project will develop a novel generic sensing methodology, integrating live sensor cells into a specially designed miniaturised hardware platform. The design and construction of such bio-hybrid sensors will combine state of the art synthetic biology with innovative integrated photonic circuits (IPCs), an objective that is unachievable with today’s technologies. The proposed methodology will...
Biological processes at the interface of cell and developmental biology are highly dynamic and take place on several spatial and temporal scales. Methods allowing to visualise and quantify these processes across scales are becoming indispensable for modern biological and biomedical research and applications. Fluorescent microscopy has emerged as a powerful technique to acquire spatial and...
Throughout the world cryostats and dewars are used to transport and store liquid materials at very low temperatures. Those devices are often very large and can only be inspected during maintenance periods, when they are emptied. This project aims at developing a robot able to move freely inside the cold volume, perform inspections and transmit...
Light is a powerful tool to non-invasively probe scattering media for clinical applications. Time-domain (TD) technique relies on the injection of fast laser pulses and on the collection of the re-emitted photons though a single-photon detector. TD technique has 2 main advantages: i) disentangling scattering from absorption; ii) encoding the mean depth reached by the...
Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary and fast-growing market segment, primarily based on brain mapping investigations aimed to understand complex neuronal circuits and nervous operational pathways. It is well known that brain activity relies on interactions between large populations of neurons located in different brain regions. Understanding the relationships between these specific areas and disentangling the contributions...
Fetal surgeries are among the most complex surgical interventions because entail operating in location with difficult access, through an endoscopic instrument that reduces vision and manoeuvrability, there is usually a lack of information on what to expect inside the patient, time sensitivity and extreme fragility of the patient. Recent advances in medical imaging techniques, artificial...
The purpose of this project is to explore the potential of new preparation processes of magneto optical (MO) materials for applications in guided optics. The project is based on unique know how to IPCMS: to the development of materials initiated by the Département de Chimie des Matériaux Inorganiques of the IPCMS and developed by the...
We propose a compact imaging and particle-tracking device, named INSTANT, consisting of a complete detection and image processing system, from pixel sensors to data processing electronics. It provides very high time (10ps) and space (10μm) resolution per pixel. Embedded data processing for data compression and real-time reconstruction of the recorded events is also a key...
PHOTOQUANT aims at exploiting the potential of the emerging field of nano-photonics for developing a new generation of highly efficient and ultrafast single-photon quantum sensors. The project proposes two different approaches: the first will exploit the ability of nanometallic structures to concentrate light into subwavelength volumes, designing an interface layer between the light source and...
Structural alongside functional smart materials play an important role in modern industry and technology. The behaviour of such materials is often governed by their structural properties. Knowledge on their specific grain formation and orientation is crucial for their development and use in prospective applications. Neutron diffraction plays a central role in the structural characterisation of...
The goal of this proposal is to implement broadband giant refraction (n>10) to achieve a basic building block in what could be termed a white-light photonics, an all-purpose achromatic white-light transducer. The white-light transducer will be able to transfer with maximum efficiency light from any angle of incidence to a photosensitive sensor, irrespective of the...
The transverse position of the charged particle beam circulating in an accelerator is one of the most basic yet crucial observables. Efficient and safe operation of every accelerator, as well as performance reach of many physic experiments, relies heavily on accurate beam position measurements. Such measurements are typically performed with Beam Position Monitors (BPM) –...
Glass and glass ceramics are attractive alternatives to the crystalline materials widely used in radiation detectors in basic research as well as for applications in medical diagnostics and homeland security detectors. The materials can be fabricated in moulds or by sol-gel techniques. Therefore, they can be prepared in various geometrical shapes such as blocks, plates,...
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by parasitic protozoans belonging to the Plasmodium species (spp.). It is one of the deadliest diseases claiming half a million deaths annually and its elimination is one of the aims declared on the UN Millennium Development Goals. The worldwide reduction of malaria prevalence raises the need for highly...
The project can be defined as a multidisciplinary effort towards finding the optimal scientific links between the synthesis of the carbon-quantum dots/graphene hybrids and their applications in broad band photodetection. Specifically, it will address the current need to develop flexible carbon-based photodetector (PD) with detection window broader than Si-based photodetectors (sensitivity ranging from UV to...
Integrated image sensors revolutionised the world of visible imaging and receive interest in many other fields. Monolithic CMOS pixel sensors have already been produced to cover a few square meters in some particle physics experiments. The ideal image sensor or camera would detect ionizing particles with an almost noise-free, large amplitude signal, tens of ps...
Sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a cardiac arrhythmia that originates whenever there is tissue substrate constituting a re-entrant circuit, i.e., the presence of viable myocytes (‘channels’) embedded in myocardial scar, such as post-acute myocardial infarction (AMI) scar. AMI is one of the most prevalent human diseases, and sustained VT is a major cause for sudden...
Any sensitive detection instrument seeks to isolate a usually very rare signal out of -an often overwhelming amount of- undesired, disturbing background events. Hence, breakthroughs in an instruments’ sensitivity are typically associated with more efficient detection of the former and/or more effective suppression of the latter. For sensitive optical devices this implies that the detection...
In this project the innovative photonics-based technologies, emerging paradigms in machine learning, new concepts in computational modelling of light-tissue interaction and definitive pathology are merged together to explore the opportunity of using the fundamental properties of light, namely circular and/or elliptical polarisation and spin angular momentum of light, for advanced cell cultures diagnosis and tissue...
