Created by three alumni of École Polytechnique, the event dedicated to space and its exploration takes place from November 17th to 19th on the School’s campus. Hosting SpaceCon 2023 illustrates École Polytechnique's strong commitment to its research, training and innovation missions, and to meeting the most ambitious challenges in space research and exploration.
Confirming its contribution to research excellence in France and to the development of tomorrow's space technologies, École Polytechnique is participating alongside CNRS and Safran Electronics & Defense in the creation of a joint laboratory, COMHET, dedicated to improving space thruster technologies.
Nicolas Cruaud (X2016), co-founder of Néolithe, won the Ivy 2023 prize, and David Henri (X2013), co-founder of Extrotrail, was one of the finalists. Two distinctions that underline Ecole Polytechnique's dynamism in entrepreneurship and innovation.
École Polytechnique organized a five-day boot camp for the 35 postdoctoral researchers enrolled in the EuroTech Postdoc2 fellowship program. From April 17-21, 2023, the participants joined the campus from across Europe to meet their peers and take part in several workshops designed to support them in their future careers.
Thanks to a high-powered laser installed on the summit of Säntis (Switzerland), a European consortium led by the Laboratoire d’optique appliquée has succeeded in influencing the trajectory of lightning. These results are published in the journal Nature Photonics.
In many astrophysical processes such as solar flares, particle acceleration is likely to result from the reconnection of different magnetic field lines. In a paper published in Nature Communications, a team including researchers from the Intense Laser Laboratory and the Plasma Physics Laboratory shows that the geometry of these field lines plays a crucial role.
The researchers receive the François Frenkiel Award from the American Physical Society for their work at the Hydrodynamics Laboratory on the modelling of active drops moving in a fluid.
Victoire Cachoux (X2013), Flore Sentenac (X2014), Lucile Vigué (X2015), Anne Nguyen (X2014), Marie Cherasse, PhD student at the Irradiated Solids Laboratory, and Angèle Niclas, post-doctoral student at the Centre for Applied Mathematics, are among the laureates of the l'Oréal-UNESCO 2022 Prize for Women in Science, which rewards their research work conducted during their PhD.
Donna Strickland, Tibor Juhasz, Ron Kurtz, Detao Du and Gérard Mourou are recognized for applying ultrafast lasers to treat eye diseases. This is an example where basic research has unexpectedly led to an important tool for society.
During a three-month visit, two Sudanese researchers, Fatema Mohamed and Maram Ali Ahmed, joined École Polytechnique’s Irradiated Solids Laboratory and strengthened their collaboration with the laboratory’s Theoretical Spectroscopy group on research projects focusing on the simulation of materials’ electronic properties. Moreover, Fatema will join the EuroTech Postdoc2 program in 2023 to pursue her postdoctoral studies in co-supervision at l’X and EPFL.
As they participate in the Optics in the City of Light research experience program, four students from the University of Michigan join École Polytechnique’s laboratories for a two-month internship. Organized with several partners of the University Paris-Saclay, the program focuses on laser research.
Pascal Chabert, CNRS research director at the Plasma Physics Laboratory and Professor at École Polytechnique, has just been awarded a CNRS silver medal. It recognises his significant work in the field of plasma physics, with applications for microelectronics and space propulsion.
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