Associate of the Department of Condensed Mater Physics of the Jožef Stefan Institute Professor Slobodan Žumer and his Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher Guilhem Poy at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, in collaboration with the experimental soft mater physics group of Professor Ivan Smalyukh at University of Colorado Boulder, made an important contribution to the interpretation and successful realization of a controlled opto-mechanical interaction of optical and topological solitons in frustrated chiral nematic liquid crystals. Finding of an unusual traction effect of particular optical solitons in such media allows light-induced periodic arrangement of topological solitons that in addition to the scientific aspect, has a potentially important relevance for use in the soft matter photonics. The authors recently published the results of this research in the article Interaction and co-assembly of optical and topological solitons in the renowned journal Nature Photonics.