Institut Fresnel

Directrice de Recherche CNRS
Institut Fresnel, CNRS UMR 7249
Aix-Marseille University


Silver Medal Award Ceremony on October 27 at 11:00 a.m., Campus Joseph Aiguier, Marseille

The silver medal distinguishes a researcher for the originality, quality and importance of its work, recognized nationally and internationally.
Imaging molecular organization at the nanoscale using optics

Sophie Brasselet, trained as an optics physicist, is interested in the way optics can read-out matter properties at the nanoscale.
She brought a remarkable contribution, at the international level, in the field of bio-imaging and nanosciences, by exploiting the properties of light polarization. She provided joint conceptual and experimental developments to achieve a novel tool in optical microscopy which permits to image, at the molecular scale, bio-molecular orientational organization in complex media, using fluorescence and nonlinear optics.
Today, her approaches cover several fields: physics of light-matter interaction at the nanoscale, fundamental open questions in biology on the relation between molecular organization, biological function and biomechanics, and advanced technological developments in optics.
This interdisciplinary link opens an original route for optical imaging, which applications are very broad, from nanomaterial engineering to neurosciences and developmental biology.
Sophie Brasselet coordinates regularly international and interdisciplinary research projects, but also programs for training in optics, such as the European doctorate program Erasmus Mundus Europhotonics, which is associated to an international master program in Photonics that she has contributed to initiate.

Sophie Brasselet has been trained as an engineer at Ecole Supérieure d’Optique (Orsay, 1994).
After a phD at Université Paris-Sud on the engineering of multipolar molecules for nonlinear optics, she has spent two years as a postdoctorate in the group of W.E. Moener at University of California San Diego and Stanford University (USA), where she developed new imaging methods for single molecule detection.
Appointed as an assistant professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure of Cachan in 2000, she has elaborated an original polarized nonlinear microscopy tool for imaging and manipulation of organic molecule in polymers.
She moved seven year later at Institut Fresnel (Aix Marseille Université), where she extends now these techniques to bio-imaging.
She has obtained a CNRS research director position in 2009. Sophie Brasselet is co-author of 95 publications in international journals, 5 book chapters and 1 patent. She has given 40 invited conference talks.