Workshop : Plasmonics in biology and medicine
I’ll attend (and give a talk) at the next workshop on plasmonics in biology and medicine, to be held on Friday December 14th 2007 at ESPCI, 10 rue vauquelin 75005, Paris
Visit the website : http://gdr2588.ibl.fr/plasmon/intro_plasmonique.php
Registration is free !!!
Because of their unique optical properties, the use of plasmons is getting more and more important for biological and medical research. These applications include the use of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to measure bioaffinity reactions, tailoring fluorescence properties and the use of metal colloids as new light-scattering probes fro imaging or phototherapy.
The goal of this workshop is to provide an interdisciplinary forum for state-of-the-art methods and instrumentation related the new research area of plasmonics and related nanosystems and their applications in biology and medicine. A poster session will complete the lectures and allows everyone to exchange their ideas on plasmonic.
Latest funded project : ANR ANTARES
The 3-years ANTARES project aims at fabricating and characterizing nanostructured substrates for surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and fluorescence emission. The controlled arrangement of the colloidal structure and the use of single crystal colloids will enable to adapt the optical specifications in terms of spectral response and electromagnetic enhancement.
Learn more at http://icb.u-bourgogne.fr/antares/
Summer time
OK, nothing really new on this blog for quite a while… Ah, summer time, “perfect-time-to-get-research-done”, and so few new findings by the end of it. At least, I perfected my knowledge about the carrying babies stuff, and increased by left forearm muscles with this cute 6kg princess :o)
PhD in France
I often get applications from students wishing to start a PhD in France
Below is a translation of the eligibility conditions found on the research ministry website :
http://dr.education.fr/Alloc_doc/alloc_1.html
The student who wishes to profit from a research grant must make the request of it for the academic year which immediately follows the date on which he obtained a master’s degree. This condition does not apply to the titular candidates of Aggregation. Exemptions are possible if, between the year of obtaining the DEA or the master research and the year of candidature, student has:
- carried out its national service, whatever the duration of this one, or accompanied its spouse who carried out his national service abroad
- prepared, during one year, and presented Aggregation or the
- carried out the practical training course of Aggregation or the
- been in disease or maternity leave during more than four months consecutive,
- carried out a training course abroad within the one year limit.
- finished their boarding school of speciality for the pharmacy and house physicians, having profited from a year-research to prepare a master’s degree or a DEA.
Actually, I just got a candidate rejected because of this [odd] condition. I'm very disappointed/upset since I thought my country would be more open-minded that this, and that exemptions could still be possible... As far as I understand it, since there are only few grants per lab each year, competition is tough, and any non-scientific argument to reject somebody is highly welcome !
Country of obtaining master's degree: The candidate for a PhD grant must have obtained his diploma of thorough studies or his master research in France or an equivalent diploma in a country signatory of the agreement on the European Space of the higher education (in addition to by the Member States of the European Union, this agreement was signed by Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaïdjan, Bosnia-Herzegovinia, Croatia, federation of Russia, Georgia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldavia, Norway, Serbia-Montenegro, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican).
Age: Less than 25 years at the civil end of the year of the inscription in first year of thesis. Exemptions, granted by the chief of establishment, are possible for the old students of less than 30 years to January 1 of the year of candidature, on presentation of a request express and justified of the person in charge for the doctoral school.
Latest publication : photokinetic rates inside nanoapertures
So finally, it got accepted in J. Phys. Chem. C and is now available on the journal homepage following this link. In this paper, we resolve the photokinetics alteration of fluorescent Rh6G molecules diffusing in a water-glycerol mixture within a single 150nm aperture milled in an opaque aluminum film.
We describe the physics behind the observed overall 15 fold enhancement of the average fluorescence rate per molecule. The fluorescence rate enhancement is clearly seen from the data displayed on Fig 3A, and was already reported to some extent in earlier works. The novelty in this paper is that we apply a procedure based on FCS and lifetime measurements to resolve the different molecular transition rates and their alteration brought by a nanoaperture. This procedure is very close to the one introduced by Jerker Widengren and coworkers in Ref. [19] and [20]. This procedure is broadly adaptable to a wide range of nanostructures.
