During his studies as “éleve normalien” at ENS Lyon, Alexis Peaucelle became interested in morphogenesis and epigenetics. As a graduate student, he worked on the existing model organism Arabidopsis thaliana at the IJPB in Versailles, where he explored genetic and epigenetic patterning of apical tissues. During his first post-doctoral training, he joined the bastion of biophysics in France: The “Laboratoire Matières et Systèmes Complexes” at the Université Paris Diderot where he pioneered AFM based micro-mechanical measurements on living plant and animal tissues. In parallel, he started a long-standing collaboration with Herman Höfte focusing on the biochemistry of the plant extracellular matrix: the cell wall. He later entered INRAE as CR in Herman’s Höfte team. He passed his HDR in 2015 following the successful Ph.D. of his student Mathieu Rivière working on plant growth-related motions. Finally, during his sabbatical as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie “Agreenskills+” Alumnus at the Sainsbury Laboratory at Cambridge University, he established a very fruitful collaboration with Kalina Haas (MRC Cancer Unit, University of Cambridge) and Raymond Wightman (SLCU). This led to the unprecedented development of 3D dSTORM nanoscopy imaging of plant tissues. This, combined with Finite Element Method (FEM) modelling, led them to propose a new model for plant cell wall expansion, which represented a paradigm shift in our understanding of plant growth.