News from the society

Hello everyone, we're Lucie and Pierre, and here is the BioBrillouin society's newsletter for the month of September 2025.

Next Newsletter

The next newsletter will be sent out on December 1, 2025. We therefore ask you to send us your information before November 20, 2025. Thanks in advance :)

BioBrillouin Conference: REGISTRATION OPEN!!!

Next BioBrillouin Conference will be held on 25-27 November 2025 at the official Conference Venue of the Max Planck Society, near Berlin, Germany. 

Registration is now open and abstract submission are accepted until October 1st 2025. Submission for both talks (12min+3min questions) and/or Posters are accepted. 

Please spread the word (friends, colleagues, mailing-lists, end-of-talk announcements, etc.), and we hope to see many of you in Berlin!!

Beta testers for file formats used by the BioBrillouin community

We developed file formats and related software to standardize the storage and processing of Brillouin data and we are looking for feedback/beta testers.

To that end we have created:

• A web app, which can be fully run in the browser and open both local and cloud brim files

• BRIM file: a format based on Zarr, dedicated to imagery data and with cloud support (link to GitHub repository)

• BRIMX: A format based on HDF5, meant to organize locally any Brillouin spectroscopy-related data (link to GitHub repository)

The goal would be for you to try using these formats and provide feedback to us. To that end, we provide a PDF document to all interested parties. You are also encouraged to directly contact us for more information!

Registration to the society

We are currently waiting for some details on the society status to be formalized by our legal team and authorities before we can send out membership confirmations/information. The bureaucracy is surprisingly remarkable. We thank you for your patience, and will contact you as soon as these are finalized.

As soon as these are sorted, there will be a mailing address (members@biobrillouin.org) that all members can post to. In the mean time, information by the societies board will be relayed via the info-mailing list info@biobrillouin.org (to which this newsletter is sent).

New publications

Articles

• Bouvet et al - Consensus Statement on Brillouin Light Scattering Microscopy of Biological Materials - link

• Gomez et al - Highly dynamic mechanical transitions in embryonic cell populations during Drosophila gastrulation - link

• Ibrahim et al - Self-driving microscopy detects the onset of protein aggregation and enables intelligent Brillouin imaging - link

• Lemahieu et al - RAB5A Promotes Active Fluid Wetting by Reprogramming Breast Cancer Spheroid Mechanics - link

• Nicolai et al - In-fiber Rayleigh peak suppression for Brillouin spectroscopy - link

• Pachernegg-Mair et al - Ionic liquid treatment of flax fibers and the effects on morphology and mechanical properties - link

• Qi et al - Stimulated Brillouin scattering microscopy with a high-peak-power 780-nm pulsed laser system - link

Prepublication

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

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

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

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

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

• Vovard et al - Probing molecular concentration in cell nuclei with Brillouin microscopy - link

Upcoming events

• Conference - 25-27 November 2025 - Berlin (Germany) - BioBrillouin Conference - link - Abstract submission before October 1 2025

• Conference - 9-13 February 2026 - EMBL Heidelberg (Germany) - EMBL Course on Brillouin microscopy for life science applications - link - Applications open until November 3rd 2025

• Workshop - 9 -11 February 2026 - Sydney (Australia) - 6th international Workshop on Optomechanics and Brillouin-Mandelstam scattering: Fundamentals, Applications and Technology (WOMBAT) - link

New position openings

• 6 months internship on simulating, designing and potentially building a new Brillouin microscope - European Molecular Biology Laboratory - Heidelberg (Germany) - Robert Prevedel

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

• Post-doctoral position on applying Brillouin microscopy for current challenges in immune-cell based therapies of solid tumors - Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin - Erlangen (Germany) - link to the research division webpage - Jochen Guck

Interesting facts

• Leonid Mandelstam (according to historical accounts) predicted Brillouin Scattering before Leon Brillouin, yet only published this several years later. A consolation here is that the effect is called Mandelstam-Brillouin or Brillouin-Mandelstam scattering among many. There is however another effect that Mandelstam first reported for crystals, chronologically after his and Leon Brillouin’s predictions of Brillouin(-Mandelstam) scattering, for which there is less consolation in regard to “name and fame” outside of smaller circles. In this case the person who first reported that this effect also occurs in liquids got his name associated with it -- what is the effect?