My main research interests are in nonlinear dynamics, instabilities and chaos, in optical and biological systems. More precisely :

• Dynamics of genetic regulatory networks: Genetic oscillations, circadian clocks,...
• Characterization of deterministic chaos in signals, most notably by topological methods based on knot theory. [More information here]
• Dynamics of optical systems (lasers, optical parametric oscillators,...)

News

• The "Laboratoire d'Excellence" project Centre Européen pour les Mathématiques, la Physique et leurs Interactions (CEMPI), for which I serve as the Physics coordinator, has been selected in the second national call for projects and will be funded for 8 years. CEMPI will gather the Paul Painlevé and PhLAM laboratories around scientific problems at the interfaces of mathematics and physics, physics and biology, mathematics and computer science. In particular, CEMPI will focus on the nonlinear collective dynamics of complex atomic and optical systems and on biological physics, themes which are also supported by the "Dynamique et Complexité" and "Biological and Medical Physics" axes of the Fédération de Physique et Interfaces.
• The second edition of the Topology of Chaos has come off the press on November 16 and is available from your favorite book store.
• Our work on the robustness of biological clocks is mentioned by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique among the significant scientific advances of its laboratories in 2010, on page 16 of its Rapport Scientifique 2010.
• Our submission to the International Conference on Systems Biology 2011, "Robustness of circadian clocks to daylight fluctuations", has been selected as one of the three contributed short talks in the "Design Principles of Living Systems" session , and as one of the 20 invited papers of the ICSB special issue in FEBS Journal.
• Benjamin Pfeuty, who has been in our group as an ANR-funded post-doctoral researcher since september 2009, has been hired by CNRS as a permanent research scientist in october 2011, and assigned to our lab.
• PLoS has issued a press release on November 11 about our paper on the robustness of circadian clocks recently published in PLoS Computational Biology. CNRS has also issued a press release on November 15.

Recent papers

• Q. Thommen, B. Pfeuty, F. Corellou, F.-Y. Bouget and M. Lefranc, "Robust and flexible response of Ostreococcus tauri circadian clock to light/dark cycles of varying photoperiod", invited paper to appear in the FEBS Journal special issue "ICSB 2011" ([PDF, on HAL server]
• M. Lefranc, "Reflections from the fourth dimension", chapter in the book From Laser Dynamics to Topology of Chaos, in honor of Robert Gilmore's 70th birthday, R. Gilmore and C. Letellier eds. (World Scientific, in press) [PDF].
• B. Pfeuty, J.-F. Bodart, R. Blossey and M. Lefranc, "A dynamical model of oocyte maturation unveils precisely orchestrated meoitic decisions", PLoS Comput. Biol. 8, e1002329 (2012) [PDF, Open access article on journal site]
• B. Pfeuty, Q. Thommen, and M. Lefranc, "Robust entrainment of circadian oscillators requires specific phase response curves", Biophysical Journal 100, 2557 (2011) [PDF, on journal site]
• P.-E. Morant, Q. Thommen, B. Pfeuty, C. Vandermoere, F. Corellou, F.-Y. Bouget and M. Lefranc, "A robust two-gene oscillator at the core of Ostreococcus tauri circadian clock", Chaos 20, 045108 (2010) [PDF, Open access article on journal site] (in the list of the top 20 downloads of the journal from January to June 2011 included).
• Q. Thommen, B. Pfeuty, P.-E. Morant, F. Corellou, F.-Y. Bouget, and M. Lefranc, "Robustness of circadian clocks to daylight fluctuations: hints from the picoeucaryote Ostreococcus tauri", PLoS Comput Biol 6(11): e1000990. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000990 (2010) [PDF, Open access article on journal site] (appeared as Featured Research on the home page of PLoS CB for one month).

Where can we meet?

Archives

• August 28-September 1 I will be in Mannheim (Germany) to participate in the International Conference on Systems Biology 2011.
• September 12-16, 2011: I will be in Oldenburg, Germany, to attend the XXXI Dynamics Days Europe Conference where I have been invited in the mini-symposium "Systems Biology: a dynamics and statistical physics approach" organized by Mamen Romano.
• March 14-16, 2012: I organize the "Rencontre du Non-Linéaire", the french-speaking nonlinear dynamics conference, at Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris.
• March 27, 2012: I give a talk in the mathematical physics seminar of the mathematics department of the University of Lille, on "stretching, squeezing, and linking in chaotic dynamical systems".
• April 1-6, 2012: As a member of the organizing committee and participant, I will be at the Ecole thématique interdisciplinaire d'échanges et de formation en biologie de Berder, a truly interdisciplinary summer school ranging from biology to philosophy via computer science and physics and much more !
• April 12: I give a talk on the flexibility and robustness of Ostreococcus tauri circadian clock in the "mathematics for biology and health" seminar of Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions in Paris.
• April 27: I am invited to give a talk about the robustness and flexibility of Ostreococcus circadian clock in the Molecular Systems Biology Seminar at the Institute of Theoretical Biology, Charité-Universitaetsmedizin and Humboldt-Universität, Berlin.
• May 3: I will be in Copenhagen, at the Center for Models of Life of Niels Bohr Institute, to serve as a referee in Lykke Pedersen's thesis defence (advisor Mogens H. Jensen) and to give a seminar on oscillations in a self-repressing gene with transcriptional memory.
• May 14 I will talk about Ostreococcus circadian clock in the Mathematical Biology seminar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
• May 16-19, 2012 I will be at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to attend the 12th edition of the Experimental Chaos and Complexity Conference, as a member of the international organizing committee.
• May 30: I give a seminar about the robustness and flexibility of Ostreococcus circadian clock at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
• June 4-6, 2012 I am invited in Zaragoza to give a plenary talk about the topological analysis of chaotic dynamical systems at Nolineal 2012, the annual meeting of the spanish nonlinear dynamics community.
• August 22-29, 2012 I am invited at the "Ecole d'été du Non-Linéaire de Peyresq" to give a series of lectures on the nonlinear dynamics of biological systems.
• September 5, 2012 I will give an invited talk in the "Complex Dynamics in Cellular Systems" meeting, a satellite of the European Conference on Complex Systems 2012, in Brussels.
• September 27-29, 2012 Much to my pleasure, I have been invited to talk in the symposium on "Oscillations, Thresholds and Bistability in Cellular Regulatory Networks" organized in Brussels to celebrate Albert Goldbeter's scientific career.

---

Fri May 4 08:07:34 CEST 2012