Visiting Student Researcher Fellowships

Electric propulsion for satellites is a technology that largely reduces the launch costs and provides reliable orbit control capabilities. Nevertheless, the design and development of plasmas thrusters is still semi-empirical and involves long and expensive life tests due to the complex, nonlinear physics of low-temperature plasmas, making its study an active field of research. In this project I will be collaborating with Prof. Ken Hara to develop innovative models and numerical methods to study the onset of plasma instabilities in magnetized configurations.

Spatial audio refers to various systems and techniques used to diffuse sound sources or sound fields in space. While “surround sound” systems which are present in many homes typically involve 5 to 7 speakers, more advanced techniques such as Ambisonics and Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) imply the use of a much greater number of speakers. Those techniques are very efficient to recreate sound spatialization and are of high interest in fields like virtual and augmented reality, acoustic of concert room, archeoacoustics, etc.

Low-temperature plasmas have multiple vital scientific and industrial applications, including plasma processing, electric propulsion, arc discharges, and many more. Plasmas exhibit complex phenomena in a wide range of both spatial and temporal scales, spanning frequencies from gigahertz to kilohertz and length scales from microns to meters.

A major health challenge our societies are about to face on the long-term is cancer, as it is already the primary cause of death in France and the second one in the US. As a way to tackle it, one of the most used techniques nowadays is radiotherapy. It uses high-dose radiations to kill cancer cells detected with medical imaging. Yet, as cancer can be located in sensitive areas, and in a bid to protect surrounding healthy tissues, radiations must be precise and directional.

Substance use disorders are prevalent forms of mental illness that have severe consequences for affected individuals and the broader society. The chronic nature of these conditions is explained in large part by the interaction of psychological and brain-based processes that imprison the individual in a long-term cycle of remission and relapse. Based on innovative technology using smartphones, we are now able to track these psychological processes in real-time and in everyday environments.

The infamous Alzheimer's disease is at the heart of numerous research, because of the number of patients suffering from it, and the lack of known cure at the moment. This is why researchers endeavor to better understand the process by which the disease evolves, and this at different scales. The project to which I will contribute within the Gentles Lab aims at exploiting multiscale data in order to better determine the progression of the disease, using machine learning and computational methods.

The musical project Sum and Difference combines acoustic research from the French national Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) for recording and understanding a synthetic physical model of the ancient Chinese instrument, the sheng, with Stanford research in audio spatialization and ethically composing for traditional instruments and electronics.  The title is in reference to the psychoacoustic phenomena of sum and difference tones that are artificially perceived in addition to the two real tones that are sounded at

My research is at the crossroad between literature, philosophy and political theory. More precisely, I study the intertwined relations between politics, literature and theory in mid-twentieth century France through the theme of community in Blanchot and Barthes’ thoughts. Both alternated periods of political commitment and ethical disengagement. By doing so, they dismantled and overcame the well known opposition between engagement and l’art pour l’art. I aim to answer to these questions: What kind of community are they writing and dreaming about?

With Sustainable Development Goal 6, "Clean Water and Sanitation", the United Nations aims for a universal access to safe and affordable drinking water. However, in 2017, 800 million people still lacked access to basic drinking water services, especially in rural areas. Photovoltaic water pumping systems (PVWPSs) are an interesting solution to improve water access, as they are economically competitive in isolated areas and have low maintenance requirements.

When we hand an object to another human we let go only when we know the recipient has achieved a secure grasp. How do we "know" that the recipient has a secure grasp on the object? Humans rely on touch sensing to monitor and mediate this "handover" process. A subtle aspect of this process is that we use "active perception" to detect the quality of the recipient's grasp.