Philippe Marmottant, a CNRS researcher at LIPhy, appeared on the Big Bang program hosted by Christophe Galfard on France Inter. During this program dedicated to endemic plants, Philippe Marmottant revealed the nature of a mysterious sound emitted by plants.

The use of fluorescent biosensors capable of optically reporting biochemical signals is hindered by the lack of simple methods to quantitatively measure and analyze their signal. The previously developed QuanTI-FRET method has been simplified and is now available in user-friendly, open-source software.

Large-format panels illustrate some of the research activities carried out at the laboratory.

The MATERIALS 2026 international conference will be held from November 16 to 20, 2026, in Grenoble (Isère). This event is organized by the French Materials Federation (FFM), which brings together 26 scientific and technical associations involved in materials. It is part of the MATERIALS series of conferences, which have been held every four years since 2002 and have established themselves as the must-attend French-language event for all academic and industrial players in the world of materials.

The school explores how living and synthetic active matter communicate, coordinate, and make decisions through physical, chemical and informational cues. Moving beyond contact and hydrodynamic interactions, the school focuses on chemical communication, quorum sensing, and informed active matter—three paradigms linking physics, chemistry, and biology. Emphasis is directed on how chemical signaling shapes collective motion, how cell populations self-organize through density-dependent feedback, and how agents can harness environmental information to optimize their behavior. By bridging active matter physics with biological regulation, the school aims to reveal new principles of organization in complex, living-like systems.

Roxane Lestini and Nicolas Olivier (Laboratoire d'Optique et Biosciences, Palaiseau)

Matteo Milani (ESPCI Paris)

Marco Canepari (Optima)

Catherine Bouchenot (BIOP) avec Soraya Arias (INRIA)

Irina Mihalcescu (MC2)