I am interested on understanding atmospheric aerosols and traces gases, from the physical and chemical processes affecting them, to their effects upon weather, climate, ocean biogeochemistry, air quality and health. My research group develops improved representations of pollutants within atmospheric and climate models to characterize their sources, sinks, atmospheric lifecycles and effects. I am known for my work on dust aerosols; in that context, I hold an AXA Chair that tackles both fundamental and applied research questions related to dust and I lead an ERC Consolidator Grant that investigates the role of the dust mineralogical composition in the climate effects of dust based on theory, experimental campaigns, remote spectroscopy and modeling.

In my group, we use confined microfluidic environments to control reaction-diffusion conditions that allow for an extraordinary control over self-assembly processes (supramolecular chemistry) and for materials engineering. We have proved that microfluidic devices (where mixing occurs only through molecular diffusion) can be used to generate, isolate and study out-of-equilibrium structures (which is crucial to understand and control self-assembly); to engineer unprecedented functional materials (controlled crystal defect engineering); and further, to localize and control self-assembly processes on surfaces.

Thomas is a biochemist who is interested in understanding intracellular self-organization processes. Specifically, his lab studies the microtubule cytoskeleton which is particularly important during cell division when it builds the mitotic spindle that separates the genomic material of the cell. Thomas is mostly known for developing microscopy-based in vitro reconstitution approaches in which sub-systems of the cytoskeleton are re-built outside of cells from purified proteins, revealing basic mechanisms underlying dynamic cytoskeleton behaviour.