About his postdoctoral project

Margination corresponds to a key step for efficient body response to injury or sepsis in which leucocytes and platelets migrate to the edges of blood vessels. This process enhances rolling for example. In physics, margination seems similar as a segregation of leucocytes according to RBCs which flow at the center of vessels. Without flow, there is no margination. Such a segregation also appears in flowing granular media with different sizes of particles. However, cells and vessels’ walls are soft and so experience hydrodynamic interactions of a different kind. Another open issue is the nature of margination in a microvascular network. Indeed, at each bifurcation, the pattern of margination is broken and must be re-established. We will use fast confocal microscopy and microfluidics (design of soft microchannels and soft networks) to decipher the origin of margination and its map.