Abstract: The fruit fly larva is a maggot which looks like a dull white cylinder. Within a few days, and without any changes in its genome sequence, it metamorphoses. It gets its sophisticated adult fly shape with wings, legs, antennas, and compound eyes. How do cells migrate, deform, and rearrange to shape a tissue ?

To approach step by step the dynamics of this morphogenesis, we will journey from developmental biology to mechanics, from discrete description of cellular material to continuum mechanics quantification, and from experiments to modeling. We will investigate flows within geometries specifically designed to discriminate between models.

Biography: My research activities aim at understanding how, during animal organism development, a tissue forms from cells, namely complex entities which self-organise and interact. This involves a truly multi-scale approach, both in vivo and in vitro, coordinating experiments, simulations and theory. The long-term goal is to answer a double question :

• For physicists : how do cellular processes determine tissue shape and size (so-called"morphogenesis"), and hence how can we link the discrete cell-scale description with tissue modeling in term of continuum mechanics ?
• For biologists : how does the cell-level regulation of various processes, including cell divisions and cell neighbor changes, precisely and robustly determine the observed shapes of adult tissues.

Independently, I try to proactively participate to "science and society" teaching and debates.