PI

Prof. dr. ir. Pierre LAMBERT obtained his MSc in mechanical engineering in 1998 (ULB), his PhD in engineering sciences in 2004 (ULB) and his habilitation in 2010 (U. Franche-Comté). After a postdoc at EPFL (2005) and at U Pierre et Marie Curie (2006), he was appointed as assistant professor at ULB in 2007 (in micro-engineering). In 2010 he got a CNRS position at FEMTO-ST (France) and then moved to the LIMMS French-Japanese lab in Tokyo (2010-2011). He is currently Professor at ULB, with research activities in the field of fluidic and flexible microrobotics. He is one of the Professors in charge of the MicroMilli platform at ULB (http://micromilli.ulb.be/), equipped with simulation, manufacturing and characterization tools for engineering at small scales (<1mm).

Research interests

  • Wet or fluidic microrobotics, using surface tension effects and capillary forces to high dynamics pick and place components, actuation, self-assembly and directed thermocapillary assembly. We aim at overcoming usual limitations: limited speed (how to control capillary adhesion at high rates), process variability (due to wetting hysteresis), liquid handling such as µm³ dispensing or avoiding liquid spill after meniscus break-up, control of surface tension effects with robotic stimuli (temperature, electric field, pressure…);
  • Soft or flexible microrobotics, towards the development of new functions or fabrication techniques for soft robotics: shaping active materials (shape memory and expansive polymers), complex kinematics, flexure guiding, tunable stiffness (granular jamming and shape memory polymers), interaction fluid-structures;
  • Microfabrication, 3D printing and microfabrication towards precision mechanics (glass flexure), mechanical engineering at small scale (microgrippers, instrumented catheters), force sensors
  • Nose-to Brain drug delivery, production of patient specific nasal cast replicates, to study drug deposition in the olfactory area, which is the pathway to the brain for the administration of drugs targeting neurological diseases.

Personal links

TIPs department website

Work experience

Permanent positions

logo_ulb2018, Université libre de Bruxelles, Professor

logo_ulb2014, Université libre de Bruxelles, Associate Professor

logo_cnrs     2009, CNRS, Senior Research Fellow (CR1)

logo_ulb2007, Université libre de Bruxelles, Assistant Professor

Invited positions
logo_waseda   2023, Waseda (Japan), Prof. T. Asahi (invited by Waseda) and Prof. H. Sawada (ULB and ASEM-DUO grants)
logo_okayama   2015, Okayama (Japan), Integration Systems Lab., Prof. T. Kanda (Erasmus Mundus EASED)

logo_aalto 2013, Aalto U (Finland), Prof. Q. Zhou

logo_todai 2011, Tokyo U (Japan), LIMMS, IIS, Prof. H. Fujita

logo_femto-st 2009, Besançon (France), FEMTO-ST, Prof. N. Chaillet

logo_epfl 2008, EPFL (Switzerland), Laboratoire de Production Microtechnique, Prof. J. Jacot

 

Education

logo_ufc, 2010, Habilitation “Surface tension effects in microrobotics”

logo_ulb2004, PhD thesis “Capillary forces in microassembly”

logo_ulb 2000, Pedagogical degree towards physics teaching (secundary school)

logo_ulb1998, MD in Electromechanical Engineering

Awards

    • Cover page of the Journal MDPI Acuators, December (2020)
    • Best application paper award at IEEE MARSS held in Helsinki, July 1-5th (2019)
    • Best application paper nomination at IEEE MARSS held in Nagoya, July 4-8th (2018)
    • Cover page of Journal of the Royal Society of Interfaces (JRSI), September (2016)
    • “Young Investigator Award” SMIT 2016, to my PhD student L. Blanc, Granular jamming as controllable stiffness mechanism for endoscopic and catheter applications, SMIT conference (2016)
    • Best poster award to my PhD student S. Gernay, MicroMAST’2016 conference, Brussels, (2016)
    • MARRS2016 Big on Small award (2016)
    • Coordination of the Belgian thematic network on Microfluidics and Micromanipulation MicroMAST (2012-2017)
    • Paper on acoustic levitation highlighted in Physics Today (2011)
    • Best paper award in Assembly Automation for my research on capillary forces (2005)

Invitations

    • Invitation to Soft Robotics Conference 2023, Workshop on « When Soft Robots get small: current trends and new perspectives in the fabrication, design and application of small scale soft robots on the future of microrobotic », Singapore, April 2023
    • Invitation to ERF 2022, Workshop on « Future of Microrobotics », Rotterdam, June 2022
    • Invitation to ICRA’2020, Workshop on on the applications of micro- and nanorobotics, Paris June 2020
    • Invitation to the Waseda Workshop (Tokyo) on Active Matter for Soft Robotics, 11-12 March 2019, Tokyo
    • Invitation to the workshop Continuum and Soft Robots (CSR) for medical interventions: modeling, fabrication, and control, held at the IEEE IROS conference, Madrid, October 1-5 2018
    • Invitation to the 41th Annual Meeting Adhesion Society, which will take place in San Diego, 26/2-2/3 2018
    • Invitation to the symposium Micro-Assembly Technologies – Fundamentals to Applications Symposium during the 2017 MRS Fall Meeting & Exhibit (http://www.mrs.org/fall2017/) Boston, Massachusetts USA, November 26th – December 1st 2017.
    • Spring School on Wetting and Capillarity, ULB, 16-20 May 2016
    • Invited Speaker at MRS Spring Meeting, Phoenix Arizona 28th March – 1st April 2016
    • Invitation by the Dutch Acoustic Society NAG – Topical session on acoustics frontiers (2011)
    • Invitation in International Conference on Robotics and Automation – Workshop in the conference, Shangai (2011)
    • Invited speaker at the Summer School in Microrobotics, Besançon (2010)
    • Invitation in Robotics Science and Systems – Workshop in the conference, Philadelphia (2006)