- Awards and Distinctions
The Prix Planète are presented to INRS professors who have made outstanding contributions to the development and sharing of scientific knowledge.
Since 2015, the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) has been presenting its Prix Planète to members of its community during its annual award ceremony.
Professor François Légaré’s team was presented with this year’s Prix Planète for the achievement of excellence in partnership, mobilization, and commercialization for its work with Infinite Potential Laboratories, a Canadian company. The team, made up of Simon Vallières, research associate, as well as Stéphane Payeur and Sylvain Fourmaux from the Advanced Laser Light Source Laboratory (ALLS), specializes in material imaging, development of high-power laser technologies, laser-matter interaction, and multiphoton microscopy.
“When working with an industrial partner, the most important thing is to ensure that everyone comes out a winner, both researchers and entrepreneurs. That is the key.”
François Légaré, Professor at INRS and Director of the Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre
This partnership, mobilization, and commercialization award recognizes one or more major achievements that demonstrate a commitment to INRS partners and external stakeholders. These achievements must help to address a critical challenge for society, and must deliver mutual benefits, both for the scientists and for the partners or stakeholder community.
Laser beams under the microscope
In partnership with Infinite Potential Laboratories, Professor Légaré’s team has discovered a simple way of producing high-energy electron beams using an ultrafast infrared laser focused in the ambient air.
Electron beams developed in this way could play a key role in the development of FLASH radiotherapy, a subject currently of great interest in medical physics, since it enables better protection of healthy tissues.
However, the potential and highly tangible benefits of this breakthrough do not stop there. The discovery by Professor Légaré and his team also has critical implications for the safety of personnel handling laser beams. The electrons generated with this new method have a very high dose rate and can travel more than three metres in the ambient air, or several millimetres under the skin—posing a radiation protection problem in laboratories. It therefore highlights the need to review certain practices and radiation protection standards associated with this class of lasers, in order to improve user safety.
This discovery, which is both fundamental and applied, is already highly popular in both the scientific community and the industry. Professor Légaré and his team are working to continue their extremely promising research, which has already attracted new partners.
