Francesco Picella

Highlights

Bioconvection plumes of micro-algae: Petri dish seen from above and one plume seen from the side — **Bioconvection** Swimming micro-algae pile up under the surface and fall back as plumes. How a shaped floor or the light selects the pattern — and why it is an instability. With H. de Maleprade. Read more →

Bioconvection plumes simulated with Basilisk — **Tools, in Basilisk** Moving embedded boundaries, slip and Robin conditions, swimmers, selective frequency damping — building blocks for the stability of coupled flows, shared on my sandbox. Read more →

Francesco Picella interviewed for Cookies and Science — **Cookies and Science** An interview for students about research in fluid mechanics — what a fluid mechanician does all day, and why. Watch on YouTube →

Latest news

Nov 2026
Picture of the month on basilisk.fr — the work of Louise Gally, a former student, is the picture of the month on the Basilisk front page: selective frequency damping stabilising a von Kármán vortex street. Well done, Louise!
Nov 2026

Visiting Julien Lemetayer and colleagues at IMFT (Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse).

IMFT's wind tunnel!

IMFT, Toulouse, November 2026.
Oct 2026
Talk at JMC 2026 (Journées de la Matière Condensée, Toulouse): Sink or swim: how microhydrodynamics drives bioconvection patterns, on the bioconvection of micro-algae over a structured floor, with Hélène de Maleprade.

All news →

Get in touch!

francesco.picella [at] sorbonne-universite.fr
+33 (0)1 44 27 54 68

Institut Jean Le Rond ∂'Alembert
Sorbonne Université, Campus Pierre et Marie Curie
Tour 55-65, 5^e étage, bureau 520
Boîte courrier 162, 4 place Jussieu
75252 Paris Cedex 05, France

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