7th SLEIGHT Science Event: students at the heart of the winter edition

The Manutech SLEIGHT Graduate School organised its 7th scientific event, the SLEIGHT Science Event, from 10 to 14 January, bringing together more than 260 participants - online and onsite - around the themes of light-surface engineering.

This winter edition allowed master students, PhD students, young doctors, academic and private researchers of the Graduate school’s consortium to discover the state of research in physics, optics-photonics, materials science, image science, data science, mechanics and bioengineering. The objective of this week was to foster interactions between graduate students and researchers and to bring together researchers from different disciplines.

A high-level scientific programme

The aim of the SLEIGHT Science Event is to strengthen the links between education and research activities among its members and in their scientific communities worldwide.

The 8 guest speakers of this 7^th edition offered high-level courses while allowing students to discover new disciplines.
They addressed the design of systems for laser machining, the dynamics of ultrafast laser-surface interaction processes, diagnosis by time-resolved electron microscopy, diffractive optics, micro-optics and nanophotonics, metamaterials applied to chemistry and biology, as well as the use of machine learning approaches in physics and the use of synchrotron radiation to explore osteocyte processes.

Students at the heart of this edition

Master students competed in the Pitch session, a challenge that prepares them for their future career based on work done in their directed research projects. This year, Adrien Girardot and François Leroux, engineering students from the Institut d'Optique Graduate School and the Master OIVM (AIMA - Advanced Imaging and Material Appearance) degree programmes, won the prize for their work on the appearance of dental repairs.

During the "PhD and Postdoc session", it was the turn of the doctoral students and young doctors who presented the progress of their work. They competed for the Pulsalys prize and the Manutech SLEIGHT prize. Émilie Laffont, a doctoral student in the Hubert Curien Laboratory (UJM, CNRS, IOGS) and Centre for Research in Photonics – Ottawa (Canada), and Arnaud Valour, a young doctor at Laboratoire Hubert Curien, won both prizes.

Let’s point out a new initiative of the students: a group of master students of the Manutech SLEIGHT Graduate School, who are preparing an application for an OPTICA Student Chapter. They organized a panel discussion with Pr. Yann Amouroux, Director of OPTICA Europe, and two officers from existing OPTICA Student Chapters in Europe. The objectives of this future Student chapter in Saint-Etienne and Lyon will not only be to promote awareness of science in the optical domains among the student but also to facilitate communication and to foster interaction between students, researchers and industry professionals.

We wish a good start to this Manutech SLEIGHT Student Chapter!

A successful thesis defense

The remote mode enabled Nicolas Dalloz, a young doctoral student at the Laboratoire Hubert Curien under the direction of Nathalie Destouches (Professor at Laboratoire Hubert Curien) and the company HID Global, to defend his thesis live in front of more than 80 people; a wonderful rendition of his work on laser image multiplexing, a cutting-edge technique developed for the security of identity documents, in particular. The jury unanimously congratulated him on his brilliant research work before awarding him the degree of doctor.

Pulsalys puts the spotlight on innovation and entrepreneurship

Benoît Martin, project manager at Pulsalys, the technology transfer acceleration company of the Saint-Etienne-Lyon site, invited Denis Dieffenbach, CEO of the start-up QAnswer company specialising in semantic technologies on the web (born of research carried out in computer science at the Laboratoire Hubert Curien); Cyril Mauclair, researcher at the Hubert Curien Laboratory and scientific consultant for the start-up Keranova, which designs and develops surgical equipment for various ophthalmological indications; and Mathilde Maillard, doctoral student at the MATEIS laboratory at INSA Lyon, and author of the podcast Bien dans ma thèse, to discuss their experiences of innovation and entrepreneurship.

 
Workshops of the 3 Manutech SLEIGHT’s scientific axes rich in projects

At each edition, the actors of the projects supported by the Graduate School present the progress of their research. This January edition featured the 4 PhD students and young PhDs working on projects funded by the Graduate School. These workshops are also an opportunity to discover the state of research in other partner laboratories and to invite speakers outside the Manutech SLEIGHT consortium. We had the pleasure to welcome Peter Wiecha (LAAS, Toulouse), Pierre Delullier and Guillaume Druart (ONERA) and Daniel Turover (SILSEF Company). 

The program committee of the SSE#7 would like to thank all the speakers, participants and organizers. See you at Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne this summer from 4 to 8 July for the 8th SLEIGHT Science Event on the theme of "Photonics for Health".