15th SLEIGHT Science Event (“SLEIGHT in 2026”): More than 200 participants for this new science week of the Graduate School Manutech-SLEIGHT

On January 20, 2026

The Manutech-SLEIGHT Graduate School organised its 15th SLEIGHT Science Event from 8 to 13 January 2026 at Telecom Saint Etienne's premises (Université Jean Monnet Saint Etienne), bringing together more than 200 participants to discuss on all the Manutech-SLEIGHT themes: Optics-Photonics, Machine Learning, Surface Engineering, Image Science, Artificial Intelligence and Bioengineering.

As it is the case every year in January, the Graduate School got together for a science week during which students (master and PhD) were given the opportunity to take part. They had the opportunity to discover the state of the art of research during four classes based on several topics.

Two sessions (Pitch and Poster session) brought to light research works. During the Pitch sessions, 13 Master students demonstrated their ability to give an oral presentation of their directed research project or topic. The Poster session welcomed 38 poster presenters (master students, PhD students, post-docs, junior scientists and researchers) who presented 28 Posters based on the progress of their projects. This friendly evening welcomed over 130 participants around the Posters, fostering numerous discussions. Furthermore, the evening was enlived by theOPTICA and SPIE Student Chapters of the ASESLEIGHT association.

HIGH-LEVEL SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME COVERING ALL SLEIGHT’S TOPICS

- Sony George (NTNU, Gjovik, Norway) – "When Colors Aren’t Enough: The Power of Spectral imaging"
- Céline Molinaro (IS2M, Mulhouse, France) – "Plasmon induced light and heat for chemistry and biology"
- Sylvain Girard (Hubert Curien Lab., Saint-Etienne, France) – "Radiation Effects on Optical Fibers and Fiber Sensors: From Basic Mechanisms to Implementation in Harsh Environments"
- Jean-François Pierson (Institut Jean Lamour, Nancy, France) – "Thin-film materials: from everyday applications to new developments"
- Valentin Debarnot (CREATIS Lab., Villeurbanne, France) – "Electron microscopy enhanced by deep learning"

5 STUDENTS AWARDED FOR THEIR PRESENTATIONS DURING THE “PITCH SESSION”

Baptiste MATHEVON, Solal PEIFFER-SMADJA, Riyad KHICHANE, Dinh HA and Patrick BARRY – Master 2 students – MSc in Computer Science – Machine Learning and Data Mining – For their presentation "Partial Differential Equation (PDE) Discovery from Unregistered Images"

2 MASTER STUDENTS, 1 PHD STUDENT AND 1 JUNIOR SCIENTIST AWARDED FOR THEIR PRESENTATIONS DURING THE “POSTER SESSION”

Camille DRUELLE & Paul CORNU, Master 2 students – MSc in Optics, Image, Vision, Multimedia (OIVM) - Advanced Imaging and Material Appearance (AIMA) / Institut d’Optique Graduate School (IOGS) for their presentation "RGB image of multiple reflections between gold mirrors"

Elisa BARBAROUX, PhD student at Laboratoire Sainbiose (UJM, Mines Saint-Etienne, Inserm) – awarded for the presentation "Gravity off: investigating bone remodeling through earth-based microgravity models"

Martin BLANCHARD, Junior scientist at Laboratoire Hubert Curien (UJM, IOGS, CNRS) – awarded for the presentation "ProtoGMVAE: A Variational Auto-Encoder with True Gaussian Mixture Prior for Prototypical-based Self-Explainability"

The Graduate School also recognised the involvement of the Student Chapters OPTICA and SPIE (ASESLEIGHT student associations) who organized a fun activity during the Poster session.

SCIENTIFIC EXCHANGES DURING WORKSHOPS ON THE 3 SCIENTIFIC AXIS

Each Winter edition of our SLEIGHT Science Event includes 3 workshops on the 3 scientific axes of the programme. This year, 16 doctoral and post-doctoral students working on projects funded by the Graduate School, as well as 2 special guests, presented their work. We also had the pleasure to listen to Antoine UZEL, PhD student at Laboratoire CREATIS (INSA Lyon, UCBL, UJM, CNRS, Inserm), Villeurbanne, who presented his research on Near-Infrared Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy for Micro and Macrosteatosis Assessment in Liver Transplantation. Hatice ALTUG, Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, gave a talk on her research on Integrated Metasurfaces for Life Science and Biomedical Applications.

The SSE#15 programme committee would like to thank all the speakers, participants and organisers.

A huge thank you to Telecom Saint-Etienne for hosting the event on its premises, and in particular to its IT, reception and logistics teams for their invaluable help in organising this event.

Thank you to La Fabuleuse Cantine for hosting our lunch breaks and Award ceremony.

See you next Summer from July 6th to 8th 2026 for the 16th SLEIGHT Science Event dedicated to AI for medical and bio-medical image analysis.

Thanks for their support: