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New paper in Frontiers in Public Health

16 February 2021

We just published our paper on building an online platform linking hospital needs with academic resources during the COVID pandemic in Frontiers in Public Health, as a support for similar initiatives across the globe. I contributed to the early development and staffing of the initiative. News items at EPFL and on Frontiers blog, and full paper here.

Our letter on UV inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 published in JID

9 February 2021

The Journal of Infectious Diseases has just published our letter (free access) suggesting UVB on their own might not entirely explain the observed inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 in sunlight. This letter was motivated by the publication in the same journal of experimental results on inactivation rates of SARS-CoV-2 in sunlight, showing rates differing strongly from established theories including UVB only. Check also our related preprint.

Egan et al. 2021 CC BY NC ND

Turbulent flows over SHS in our latest published paper!

6 January 2021

In their recently published paper in the Journal of Computational Physics, to which I contributed, Raphael Egan and colleagues present a new parallel solver for incompressible flows, and demonstrate its performance by computing fully developped turbulent flows over a gratting-based super-hydrophobic surface (SHS). Check out the paper free of charge for 50 days here!

COVID-19 Seed Grant

3 May 2020

I have been awarded together with Prof. Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz, Prof. Julie A. McMurry, and Prof. Julien R. Landel a VRC COVID-19 Seed Grant of 25k$ from UC Santa Barbara for our project on the role of UVA in inactivating SARS-CoV2 and its potential use in air-purifying respirators. You can find here our related preprint.

Contribution to Academic Resources for COVID platform (ARC)

20 March 2020

As ETH went into lockdown with the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic, I contributed with several colleagues from ETH to the development and staffing of a web platform to link needs of diagnostic labs and hospitals for equipment and consumables with resources available in academic labs. This development was extremely fast to serve the rapid increase in needs, which I moderated with others for several months. In parallel in the summer a second version of the platform was finalized (in an effort led by EPFL), available here.

Our latest SHSs paper is online!

25 November 2019

Our work on the modelling of super hydrophobic surfaces (SHSs) contaminated by surfactants, and their associated reduced drag reduction properties, has just been published in Journal of Fluid Mechanics!

Successful ETH Seed Grant application!

27 June 2019

I have been awarded together with Dr. Jeanette Wheeler an ETH Career Seed Grant of 30kCHF for our joint-project investigating bacterial chemotaxis response to aerosol deposition in the microlayer - the thin layer at the top of the water column. We will start working on it in September for one year!

Great outreach week with ARTLAB Zürich!

27 April 2019

Together with my colleagues Jen Nguyen and Dr. Jeanette Wheeler (middle and right of picture respectively), we developped a scientific module on Marine Microbes for ARTLAB Zürich: Water World, a week-long program of scientific and artistic activities for high-school students, in conjunction with Science Xplore Suisse, ETH Zürich and the University of Zürich. It was a great week which just finished, and we hope that we convinced our students of the complexity of microbial life in oceans and lakes, and how fun it can be to spy on them!

Maze paper published in PRF!

18 October 2018

The accompanying paper for our award winning video "Soap opera in the maze: geometry matters in Marangoni flows" (see below) has just been published in Physical Review Fluids. Check it out for more details on the experiment and our hypotheses on what's happening there.

Defense of our Bachelor students!

1 June 2018

Today our students Armin Siegrist, Joshua Weber and Sebastian Zala successfully defended their Bachelor project on the microlayer, co-supervised with Dr. Jeanette Wheeler. Very good job everyone!

Paper published in PRE!

20 February 2018

Our work on microbial mutualism at a distance has just been published in Physical Review E! We present how the geometry of diffusive bridges between mutualistic microbes modifies their population dynamics and interactions.

Marie Curie proposal successful!

29 January 2018

The project I submitted for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship was accepted: during this 2 year project, starting in June, I will investigate the interaction between bacteria and rising bubbles in the ocean.

Maze video awarded prize at DFD

20 November 2017

Our video "Soap opera in the maze: geometry matters in Marangoni flows" has been named an Award Winner at the Gallery of Fluid Motion of the 70th APS DFD meeting in Denver, Colorado US. It is also featured in a post on FYFD. The video is also here.

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