Regular biography
Alexandre Persat is an Associate Professor in the BIO department at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His research focuses on bacterial biophysics and bioengineering, with an emphasis on microfluidics and cellular biomechanics. Persat leads the Persat Lab, where students engage in hands-on learning through courses such as Fluid Mechanics, Next-Generation Biomaterials, and Practical - Persat Lab. He is also involved in teaching and administrative roles within the School of Engineering and the School of Life Sciences. His work has been recognized with several awards, including the Egon Naef Prize and the Philanthropia Foundation Prize.
Scholar-generated biography
Alexandre Persat is a researcher whose work focuses on the interplay between bacterial motility, biofilms, and mechanobiology. His research explores how bacteria sense and respond to mechanical forces, with a particular emphasis on the role of type IV pili in regulating virulence factors and twitching motility in pathogens like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Vibrio cholerae. He also investigates the biophysical mechanisms underlying bacterial surface colonization, biofilm formation, and their interactions with host tissues. His studies integrate biophysics, mechanobiology, and tissue engineering to understand how bacteria adapt to and manipulate their environments, with applications in microbiology and biomedical engineering.