Nicolas Harmand
Physics of living matter
Laboratoire Jean Perrin — Sorbonne Université / CNRS, Paris
I use soft matter physics to understand living systems. My work is experimental: I design measurements that put physical models of tissues to the test (models I build with theoreticians, and sometimes on my own) to find where they hold, where they break, and which mechanism is missing.
Trained as an engineer at ESPCI Paris and holding a PhD in biophysics, I spent three and a half years in industrial R&D at Saint-Gobain, where I worked on controlling the flow and deposition of materials in 3D printing, which led to three patent families. I returned to fundamental research in 2024 at the Laboratoire Jean Perrin, where I build droplet sensors and magnetic rheometers to measure stresses and material properties inside developing embryos.
Research
How do cellular heterogeneity and tissue mechanics shape one another?
Epithelia on curved substrates
How far a few surface and line tensions explain the thickness of epithelial cells on a curved substrate, and where this minimal model breaks.
Stresses and rheology in embryos
Droplets injected into tissues as stress sensors, then ferrofluid droplets driven by a magnetic field to measure their rheology.
Heterogeneous tissues under flow
Research project: how cellular heterogeneity and tissue rheology shape one another, measured without assuming a constitutive law.
Latest
- Lydia Kebbal has won an EDPIF doctoral fellowship to work on the mechanics of heterogeneous epithelial monolayers, co-supervised by Léa-Laetitia Pontani and myself. Congratulations to her!
- Invited to run an experimental workshop on stress-sensing droplets at the 2nd France-BioImaging Mechanobiology Working Group meeting.
- New paper in EPJ E: design and optimization of in situ self-functionalizing stress sensors. ↗
- Awarded a 20 k€ interlaboratory grant from IBPS for 2026–2027.
Education
PhD in Biophysics
Université Paris Cité — Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes, Paris
Relevance and limits of surface and line tensions in accounting for the shapes of epithelial cells. Supervised by Sylvie Hénon.
Engineering degree, ESPCI Paris & MSc ICFP
ESPCI Paris - PSL / Sorbonne Université, Paris
Major in physics; MSc ICFP, Soft Matter and Biological Physics track.