The LIPhy

The laboratory is a joint CNRS - University Grenoble Alpes unit (UMR5588), directed by Bahram Houchmandzadeh (Director) and Irène Ventrillard (Deputy Director).

The Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Physics (LIPhy) inherits the tradition of the General Physics Laboratory of the University of Grenoble, recognized by the CNRS since 1966. Since 2007, the laboratory has largely turned towards the interfaces of physics with other disciplines, in particular life sciences and environmental sciences, mechanics or applied mathematics.
Physics is seen at LIPhy as not being restricted to a particular field of application: it is a general method of approach to complex phenomena, based on innovative instrumental developments, quantitative modeling of phenomena, their theoretical and numerical analysis.

LIPhy's research teams have developed advanced techniques in the fields of high resolution and high sensitivity spectroscopy, optical imaging in scattering media, micro and nano scale force measurements. The laboratory also has an important component of theoretical physics, modeling and high performance computing, in particular in the fields of statistical physics and complex fluids. It is actively involved in collaborations with the large instruments of the EPN campus (ESRF, ILL) in the field of complex matter and biological macromolecules. It offers to the local community an access to several experimental platforms (mechanics workshop, microfluidic fabrication, confocal microscopy, microbiology) as well as to a structure (experimentarium) dedicated to the reception of high school and college students.

The research of LIPhy is currently financed mainly by numerous national and European public contracts (ANR, ERC, INSERM, ARC...) and by ongoing collaborations with space agencies (CNES, ESA). LIPhy also benefits from the support of several local or national laboratories of excellence (Labex) as well as from the nanoscience foundation. Its researchers and engineers are currently involved, with the incubators Linksium and FIST, in the creation of several startups or technology transfer projects. The laboratory's researchers also have contractual research relationships with large companies and SMEs in the fields of optics, complex fluids and interfaces.

With a strong growth of more than 30% in the last ten years, the laboratory gathers today an interdisciplinary and international community of 70 researchers and teacher-researchers belonging to more than ten sections of the CNRS or the CNU, about sixty PhD students and postdoctoral fellows of various backgrounds, supported by thirty engineers and technicians (administrative management, scientific instrumentation, mechanics, biology, computing). LIPhy is asserting itself as one of the poles of interdisciplinarity in physics in the scientific and international community. It remains a favourable environment to welcome new themes or teams, in a spirit of openness and constant evolution towards new disciplines which has characterized it since its creation.