News

March 2026: We have published our work for the project Medicare, funded by the Service Public de Wallonie (Win2Wal), in Biomedical Microdevices. It presents a microfluidic solution based on an enzymatic assay to automatically measure the free concentration of antibiotics in blood serum.
February 2026: Ali Gholizadeh defended his amazing PhD thesis, in which he proposed a wealth of new concepts to make centrifugal microfluidics accessible to all. Congrats again, Dr. Gholizadeh !
June 2025: Ali Gholizadeh has showed that centrifugal microfluidics can be made modular and interfaced with a commercial centrifuge, thereby greatly decreasing prototyping costs. The story is published in Analytical Chemistry ! Congrats again Ali !
Oct 2024: Margaux Ska has joined the team and started a PhD on the Smart Sweat project. Welcome !
July 2024: The Microfluidics Lab is hiring a new PhD student. The goal is to design a microfluidic device that can passively collect sweat. cf. details here. NOTE: Applications are now closed.
April 2024: Ali Gholizadeh has found a new way to control the motion of fluids in centrifugal microfluidics without using any valves. His discovery is published in Sensors and Actuators: B. Chemical ! Congrats Ali !
April 2024: Justine Parmentier brilliantly defended her PhD thesis, in which she made a wonderful work on revisiting the mechanisms of stalagmite growth ! She introduced complete hydrodynamic models to describe four key steps involved in this growth process: the aerodynamics of drop free fall, the splash on the thin film covering the stalagmite, the drainage of this film along the stalagmite top, and the precipitation therein. Congrats again, Dr. Parmentier !
May 2023: Congrats to Justine Parmentier for her second paper published in Physical Review Fluids ! A very complete piece of work on the mixing induced by drop impacts on thin films, with an original colorimetry technique. Her work has been selected as an editor's choice, and was commented in the APS journal Physics !
June 2021: No more available position at the moment.
Dec. 2020: We are hiring! Please check here.
2019-2020: A lot of background work happening this past year, with nevertheless three new papers on the physics of secretion dispensing in beetles, the gripping of micro-objects and the tunneling of walking droplets.
Nov. 2019: Justine Parmentier has explained why drops don’t fall straight and how it influences stalagmite width, in Proc. R. Soc. A. And her work has been advertised in the New York Times ! Congrats Justine !
Sept. 2019: Youness Tourtit has published his work on capillary bridge break-up in Langmuir. Congrats Youness !
July 2019: Sophie Gernay has defended her excellent PhD thesis entitled Tunable capillary adhesion inspired by nature. Congrats, Sophie !
July 2019: Loïc Tadrist, Antonio Iazzolino and Youness Tourtit, in collaboration with ULB-TIPS, have won the best application paper award at the MARSS conference (Helsinki 2019), for their new design of capillary gripper for microrobotic pick-and-place. Congratulations for this great work!
Nov. 2018: Stéphanie van Loo is the 2018 winner of the AIM award for the best PhD thesis defended at the Institute Montefiore (ULiege). Congratulations again !
Nov. 2018: Sophie Lejeune has brilliantly defended her PhD thesis entitled Fragmentation of a drop impacting near the edge of a solid substrate: a key to rain-induced foliar disease transmission. Great job, Sophie !
Sept. 2018: Loïc Tadrist has published a beautiful story in Chaos, on the chaotic interaction of two walkers, and the key role played by the high-frequency vertical dynamics. Congratulations Loïc !
Aug. 2018: Sophie Lejeune has won one of the best student’s presentation awards at the 9th International Plant Biomechanics Conference at Montreal. Congratulations Sophie !
2017-2018: There has been plenty happening here, though I forgot to report it: we welcomed Brice, Antonio, Youness and Justine. Stéphanie got her PhD degree in June 2017. Loïc obtained a very competitive post-doctoral grant from FNRS. And we published a series of papers in JRSI, JFM, PRF, COIS, etc. Among our most exciting progress, we investigated the multiscale free walk kinematics of living beetles, we derived a very complete and rigorous theory for subthreshold Faraday waves, and we rationalized the liquid fragmentation upon impact of a drop near to the edge of a substrate.
Nov. 2016: With Naresh Sampara, we showed that a droplet can bounce in many different ways on a bath vibrated with two frequencies. In some conditions, chaotic vertical bouncing is observed, which leads to an erratic horizontal motion at the bath surface. This motion is strongly shaped by the Faraday wave generated at each impact. Congratulations Naresh for this publication in Physical Review E !
Oct. 2016: Stephanie Van Loo has just published the first part of her PhD work in Microfluidics Nanofluidics. In an extensive experimental study, she revisits the droplet formation in microfluidic cross junctions and highlights, among others, the effects of channel compliance and surfactants. Congratulations Stéphanie !
Sept. 2016: Sophie Gernay has won the award of the best poster at the conference microMAST 2016. Congratulations again Sophie !
Aug. 2016: Sophie Gernay has just published the first part of her fascinating research work on insect adhesion, in the Journal of the Royal Society, Interface. And it made the cover ! Congratulations Sophie !
March 2016: Stéphanie Van Loo has won the local competition “Ma thèse en 180s” @ ULg. She brilliantly squeezed hundreds of wordplays and references to movies in 3 minutes, while explaining her PhD topic.

updated on 3/30/26