Lea-Laetitia Pontani is interested in studying the mechanical properties of cells and tissues in simplified biomimetic frameworks. For instance, during her PhD in the group of Dr. Cécile Sykes at the Curie Institute, she built and characterized a biomimetic system of the actin cytoskeleton in vitro.
For her post-doc she joined the group of Jasna Brujic within the Center for Soft Matter Research at New York University. She first investigated the physics of jammed matter through confocal imaging of dense emulsions and then designed biomimetic emulsions that mimic multicellular assemblies such as biological tissues.
Eventually, these biomimetic emulsions became a widely used platform in the center and are now used for various purposes, such as directed self-assembly of DNA functionalized emulsions. For her research at the Jean Perrin Laboratory she seeks to understand the physical basis of collective remodeling in biological tissues by studying the response of these biomimetic emulsions under mechanical constraints.
She also studies mechanosensitive pathways in tissues at the microscopic level by developing biomimetic mechanosensitive cells and tissues. In these systems she studies the propagation of molecular probes and resulting patterning as a function of the applied mechanical forces.
