News from the society

Hello everyone, we're Lucie and Pierre, and here is the BioBrillouin society's newsletter for the month of March 2026.

Next BioBrillouin conference in Exeter - SAVE THE DATE

The 10th International BioBrillouin Meeting will take place from November 30th to December 3rd 2026 in Exeter, United Kingdom. As with previous years, the meeting will bring together the international community working on all forms of Brillouin Light Scattering Spectroscopy/Microscopy for life-science and biomedical (or bio-relevant) applications, spanning also interpretation of measurements, correlative studies, standardization, instrument development, translational applications, and more… Registration will open soon, and be announced on www.biobrillouin.org

We look forward to seeing you there!

Special issue Journal of Microscopy

The organizing team of the BioBrillouin 2026 conference is preparing a special issue in the Journal of Microscopy (deadline : June 1st 2026). You are all invited to contribute to this issue, to know more, please click here.

Brillouin Microscopy for Life Science Applications – EMBL Course, Heidelberg

We were thrilled to host the “Brillouin microscopy for life science applications” Course at the EMBL Imaging Centre in Heidelberg, Germany from 9-13 February 2026, organized by Kareem Elsayad, Francesca Palombo, Maddy Parsons and Robert Prevedel with the support of the EMBL Course team! This immersive week brought together researchers at all career stages to explore the fundamentals, state-of-the-art, and biological applications of Brillouin microscopy, as well as get practical hands-on training in Brillouin data acquisition and analysis. Through a mix of lectures, workshops, and practical sessions, participants gained insights into everything from core principles and data interpretation to sample preparation and advanced microscopy workflows. The course featured an outstanding roster of speakers including Alberto Bilenca, Carlo Bevilacqua, Thomas Bocklitz, Alba Diz-Muñoz, Thomas Dehoux, Kareem Elsayad, Maurizio Mattarelli, Stephanie Möllmert, Francesca Palombo, Maddy Parsons, Markéta Šámalová, Vikas Trivedi, Jitao Zhang. In addition, Markus Körbel, Juan Gomez, Jinhao Li, Tzu-Lun Wang and Vitaliy Oliynyk shared their expertise and research perspectives as trainers. We enjoyed a rich and engaging programme, and thank all attendees for their enthusiastic participation. A heartfelt thank-you also goes to our sponsors (SpectoPhotonics, CrestOptics, Nikon and Oxxius) for their generous contributions and to event supporter CellSense for bringing their microscope to this course. Everyone left inspired with new skills, ideas, and collaborations to advance Brillouin microscopy in their own research!

Group photo during the training school - Joseph Franciosa/EMBL

A presentation during the training school - Joseph Franciosa/EMBL

Next Newsletter

The next newsletter will be sent out on June 1, 2026. We therefore ask you to send us your information before May 20, 2026. Thanks in advance

Administrative updates

The legal aspects of society are now being finalized and the logistical aspects (website etc.) are in the process of being implemented. Registration for society will commence within next months and we will inform you of this/actions needed. Note: if you registered for Berlin BioBrillouin meeting you automatically have 1 year membership. More info on this will follow soon!

New publications

Articles

• Alonso Baez et al - The mechanical properties of Arabidopsis thaliana roots adapt dynamically during development and to stress - link

• Chagnon-Lessard et al - High-performance Brillouin spectroscopy using VIPA-etalon cascades - link

• Jin et al - A Framework for Spontaneous Brillouin Noise: Unveiling Fundamental Limits in Brillouin Metrology - link

• Pang et al - Vortex-Structured-Light-Assisted High-Contrast Brillouin Spectroscopy - link

• Pochylski et al - Full-Field Brillouin Microscopy with a Scanning Fabry-Perot Interferometer - link

• Simoes et al - Probing cellulose hydrogel dehydration with Brillouin spectroscopy: Insights into mechanical properties - link

• Teav et al - Performance loss and recovery of virtually-imaged phased arrays with imperfect mirror parallelism - link

• Testi et al - Stabilized real-time Brillouin microscopy reveals fractal organization of protein condensates in living cells - link

• Vovard et al - Separating water content from network dynamics in cell nuclei with Brillouin microscopy - link

• Zhang et al - Motion-Tracking Brillouin Microscopy for Keratoconus Suspect Identification: Comparison With Multimodal Corneal Imaging - link

Prepublication

• Machida et al - Lipids Are Involved in Heterochromatin Condensation: A Quantitative Raman and BrillouinMicroscopy Study - link

• Shi et al - Coaxial line-scanning Brillouin microscopy - link

• Bevilacqua et al - A standardized file format and open-source analysis framework for Brillouin microscopy data - link

• Czibula et al - The potential of Brillouin Spectroscopy for investigating the mechanical properties of hydrogels during dehydration - link

• Garcia-Baucells et al - Centrosome Softening Ensures Mitotic Fidelity Under Microtubule Forces - link

• Leong et al - Critical phenomenon underlies de novo luminogenesis during mammalian follicle development - link

• Zerin et al - The Cell Wall Controls Stem Cell Fate in the Arabidopsis Shoot Apical Meristem - link

Upcoming events

• Conference - 24 - 26 March 2026 - Munich (Germany) - Analytica - link

• Conference - 14 -16 April 2026 - Exeter (United Kingdoms) - Spring SciX 2026 - link

• Conference - 23 - 25 September 2026 - Berlin (Germany) - ITEC 2026 - link

• Conference - 30 November - 3 December 2026 - Exeter (United Kingdoms) - BioBrillouin 2026

New position openings

• Post-doctoral position on applying Brillouin-Raman microscopy applied to cancer detection (3 years contract) - University of Exeter - Exeter (United Kingdom) - Francesca Palombo

• PhD position on time-resolved BLS - Institut Lumiere Matiere - Lyon (France) - Thomas Dehoux

Interesting facts

• Brillouin zones

  Léon Brillouin did not only figure out that light could be scattered by acoustic phonons, he also introduced amongst other things, the concept of "Brillouin zones". Brillouin zones are essentially traffic laws for quantum waves: they define the allowed speed and directions a quantum wave can take. These are especially important in semiconductor physics where they are used to engineer band gaps, a phenomenon at the core of modern electronics.

Bis repetita perennis

You can send us all pre-publications and publications you have submitted, as well as any relevant publications/prepublications you have read at newsletter@biobrillouin.org so we can share them with the community in the next newsletter. Thank you!

Why did I receive this newsletter twice?

At the moment, some persons are both on general distribution/info -mailing list and on members mailing list, whereas some are only on one or the other. We are looking into fixing this and in the future you should only receive once.