Background

Geoffroy Lumay loves mechanics, electronics, and tinkering. Not satisfied to practice these things as hobbies, he wanted to make a profession of them. Deciding between physical sciences and engineering studies, he at first chose physics, thinking that it would lead him further in the direction of understanding phenomena, and that he could always learn practical applications…as the need piled up.

In 1999, he began studying for a degree in physical sciences at the University of Liege. He finished that program four years later, writing an experimental thesis on spectroscopy. Later he accepted a post as laboratory assistant for GRASP (Group for Research and Applications in Statistical Physics), attracted by the possibility the position offered, of doing hands-on physics, a physics that everyone can relate to, since it concerns questions and objects that are part of everyday life: sacks of marbles, sandpiles, sugar, pasta, etc. In December 2007 he defended his doctoral dissertation on the experimental study of the compaction of granular materials.

Publications

LUMAY G., VANDEWALLE N., Tunable random packings, New J. of Phys. 9 , 406, 2007. Read the article : http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/9/11/406

VANDEWALLE N., LUMAY G., GERASIMOV O.,LUDEWIG F., The influence of grain shape, friction and cohesion on granular compaction dynamics, Eur. Phys. J. E 22 ,241, 2007.

SCHELLER T., HUSS C., LUMAY G., VANDEWALLE N., DORBOLO S., Precursors to avalanches in a granular monolayer, Phys. Rev. E 74 , 2006.

LUMAY G., BODSON C., DELATTRE L., GERASIMOV O., VANDEWALLE N., Linking compaction dynamics to the flow properties of powders, Appl. Phys. Lett. 89,2006.

LUMAY G., LUDEWIG F., VANDEWALLE, N., Compaction of granular materials: experiments and contact dynamics simulations, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 40 ,133, 2006.

LUMAY G. and VANDEWALLE N., Experimental study of the compaction dynamics for two-dimensional anisotropic granular materials, Phys. Rev. E 74 ,021301, 2006.

LUMAY G. and VANDEWALLE N., Experimental Study of Granular Compaction Dynamics at Different Scales: Grain Mobility, Hexagonal Domains, and Packing Fraction, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95 ,028002, 2005.

LUMAY G. and VANDEWALLE N., Grain mobility and hexagonal domains formation in 2d granular compaction, Powders & Grains 1 ,343, 2005.

LUMAY G. and VANDEWALLE N., Compaction of anisotropic granular materials: Experiments and simulations, Phys. Rev. E 70 ,051314, 2004.