Speakers

We're pleased to confirm the below invited speakers so far. The full scientific programme will be announced soon.

Subir Sachdev, Harvard University

Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University. He has been elected to national academies of science in India and the United States, and the Royal Society in the U.K. He is a recipient of several awards, including the Dirac Medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, and the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society.

Sachdev has made extensive contributions to the theory of the diverse varieties of states of quantum matter, and of their behaviour near quantum phase transitions. Many of these contributions have been linked to experiments, especially to the rich phase diagrams of the copper-oxide high temperature superconductors. Sachdev's research has also exposed remarkable connections between the nature of multi-particle quantum entanglement in certain laboratory materials, and the quantum entanglement in astrophysical black holes, and these connections have led to new insights on the entropy and radiation of black holes proposed by Stephen Hawking.

Piers Coleman, Rutgers University

Piers Coleman completed his undergraduate education at Trinity College, Cambridge; he later studied theoretical condensed matter physics at Princeton University with Philip Warren Anderson. He was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics Santa Barbara. He joined the faculty at Rutgers University in 1987. Since 2010 he has also held the position of University of London Chair of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2011, Piers Coleman replaced David Pines as a co-director of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter.

Coleman is known for his work related to strongly correlated electron systems, and in particular, the study of magnetism, superconductivity and topological insulators. He is the author of the popular text Introduction to Many-Body Physics.

Irene D’Amico, University of York, UK

Professor Irene D’Amico is the head of the Semiconductor Spintronics and Quantum Information group and the lead of the Quantum Science and Technology Group of the Physics, Engineering and Technology School of the University of York. Irene D'Amico has been a professional researcher for over 20 years (PhD awarded in 2000), has written more than 140 publications as articles for international journals and book chapters, and given more than 120 invited talks, seminar, colloquia and public lectures worldwide. Her research interests include many-body interactions in solid state systems; dynamics of spin chains for quantum computing; metric space approach to quantum mechanics; density functional theory; and quantum thermodynamics.

Hae-Young Kee, University of Toronto

Hae-Young Kee is a Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto, a Canada Research Chair in Theory of Quantum Materials, and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in Quantum Materials. As a theoretical physicist, she specializes in the condensed matter physics of quantum materials, including quantum spin liquids, topological phases, high-temperature superconductors, and frustrated magnets. She has been honored with several prestigious awards, including a Sloan Fellowship in 2003, designation as an American Physics Society Fellow in 2018, and the Canadian Association of Physicists Brockhouse Medal in 2023.

Zi Yang Meng, The University of Hong Kong

Prof. Zi Yang Meng is a computational condensed matter physicist, and his research focuses on developing and employing large-scale numerical simulation techniques to investigate quantum many-body systems and materials. He obtained Ph.D. from University of Stuttgart in Germany in 2011, and was postdoctoral fellow at Louisiana State University and University of Toronto from 2011~2014. In 2014, he became an Associate Professor with tenure at Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and promoted to Full Professor in 2018. He became affiliated with Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong (HKU) as an Associate Professor in 2019 and a Full Professor from 2023. He works on model design and algorithmic development for quantum many-body physics research and made contributions to topological quantum matter, frustrated magnetism, quantum phase transitions and critical phenomena. More details can be found in his webpage https://quantummc.xyz/

Susannah Speller, University of Oxford

Susie Speller is a Professor of Materials Science at the University of Oxford where she leads the Superconducting Materials research group and co-directs the Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity. Over the last 20 years, she has worked on a wide variety of superconducting materials, ranging from superconducting solders for persistent mode joints to high temperature superconducting cuprates and iron-based materials. Her research focuses on correlating processing with microstructure and superconducting properties using advanced microscopy and spectroscopy techniques. She is currently undertaking a 5 year EPSRC Fellowship to study irradiation damage of coated conductors for compact fusion applications. Her group has carried out pioneering in situ experiments to measure the effects of cryogenic irradiation on superconducting properties, as well as investigating the nature of irradiation-induced defects using the combination of atomic-resolution electron microscopy, synchrotron x-ray absorption spectroscopy and density functional theory. She enjoys working closely with industrial collaborators and national laboratories, including Tokamak Energy, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), Oxford Instruments and Siemens Healthineers, on industrially-relevant projects. Susie is currently the Letters Editor for Superconductor Science and Technology and has recently published a book for the general audience: “A materials science guide to superconductors: and how to make them super”.

Nandini Trivedi, Ohio State University

Nandini Trivedi is a Professor of Physics and a Distinguished Professor of the College of Arts and Sciences at the Ohio State University.

Trivedi got her undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a Ph.D in physics in 1987 from Cornell University. After post-doctoral research at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and State University of New York, Stony Brook, she joined Argonne National Laboratory as a staff scientist. In 1995 she joined the faculty of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Since 2004 she has been a professor of physics at the Ohio State University.

Trivedi’s research is in understanding emergent phases in quantum matter due to strong correlations and topology.

Fu-Chun Zhang, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Fu-Chun Zhang is Director of Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received Ph.D. at Virginia Tech. in 1983. He was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Minnesota, University of Maryland and ETH-Zurich, before he took a professorship position in University of Cincinnati 1988. He moved to the University of Hong Kong (HKU) as Chair Professor in 2003, and to Zhejiang University in 2014. He has been in the present position since 2017.

Zhang is elected APS Fellow, and received Distinguished Research Professorship in University of Cincinnati, and Distinguished Achievement Award in Research and endowed Zhou Guangzhao Professorship in HKU. Zhang is a condensed matter theorist, and has been interested in unconventional superconductivity including cuprates and nickelates, and possible Majorana zero modes in condensed matter systems among various topics.