Fête de la science 2016

Taylor-Couette demixing experience
Taylor-Couette demixing experience

This year Stefano and I tried to explain the way in which micro-organisms can swim. When the environment looks very viscous one needs to break time reversibility…what a challenge to vulgarize this! But we as usual had lot of fun too 🙂 Our poster is here [pdf].

And a little video by Stefano:

Our Glycerine Mixing-Demixing experience [Thanks to Florent Delmotte for the nice setup].

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to PhD in Lille

I remember as a Post-doc in the Netherlands, I was enrolled at the University, opened a bank account and registered myself as a resident in the city hall all in less than an hour. Everything was so easy, each procedure was electronic  and in english.  It’s not the same music here in Lille. My foreigner students sometimes get trapped in administrative loopholes and when they do not master the language is not obvious how to get things done.  This is the reason why Hamidreza Ardeshiri, one of our senior PhD students in the group decided to write a How-to document to Lille 1 University.  I like to post it here for the future generations. Thanks Hamid!  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lille 1