On International Day of women & girls in science on Wednesday, February 11, 2026, three young postdoctoral researchers received the “Femmes et sciences – Jeunes chercheuses” Award from the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropole during a ceremony held at Le Pharo.
Launched in 2025, this initiative aims to support women working in the field of research, where they remain underrepresented, particularly at senior levels.
Lilian Magermans, a postdoctoral researcher in our MOSAIC team, received the “Engineering Sciences” Award. Her research focuses on the development of new coherent Raman microscopy techniques to improve the observation and analysis of dynamic materials
Abstract of the project : Speckle illumination is a powerful tool for enhancing the performance of widefield microscopy. Instead of using uniform light, the sample is illuminated with a series of varying speckle patterns, and resulting images are then computationally combined to reconstruct a super-resolved, optically sectioned image. We recently developed a new and simple way to generate random speckle illumination patterns using a dynamically scattering liquid crystal system [1]. This approach makes it possible to create rapidly changing, speckle patterns at a tunable speed adapted to a wide array of imaging conditions. Fluorescence images (see figure) of biological samples clearly demonstrate the benefits of this method, showing improved resolution, higher contrast, and optical sectioning compared with conventional widefield illumination. These results highlight the strong potential of speckle-based imaging for fast, large-field of view widefield microscopy. The next step of this project is to apply this approach to hyperspectral CARS microscopy, enabling label-free chemical imaging of biological tissues over large fields of view.
[1] L. Magermans, A. Benachir, N. P. Spiller, T. Wang, F. Vernuccio, R. Bartels, S. M. Morris, S. J. Elston, M. J. Booth, H. Rigneault, Tunable Dynamic Speckle Generation for Random Illumination Microscopy. Advanced Materials Technologies, e02098 (2026).
Contact : lilian.magermans@fresnel.fr
