Keynote Speakers

Confirmed keynote speakers:

 

keynote placeholderAnnica Black-Schaffer

Uppsala University, Sweden

Annica Black-Schaffer is a professor and head of the Quantum Matter Theory research program at Uppsala University. She holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. The work in her research group is mainly focused on mechanisms and properties of unconventional and topological superconductivity, using microscopic models to study superconductivity in many different novel materials and superconducting hybrid structures. She is the recipient of ERC Starting and Consolidator Grants and a Wallenberg Scholar. She has also been awarded the Rudbeck Medal, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Prize Sweden, and the Göran Gustafsson prize for your researchers for her work. More information is available at https://materials-theory.physics.uu.se/black-schaffer.

Title: Altermagnetism and Superconductivity
Recently, a new form of magnetism, called altermagnetism, has been discovered, beyond the previously well-established ferro- and antiferromagnetism possibilities. Altermagnets break the spin-degeneracy, as in a ferromagnet, but with a momentum dependent spin splitting resulting in zero net magnetization, as in antiferromagnets. Altermagnetism easily appear in materials due to non-relativistic spin-orbit coupling in the non-interacting electronic band structure and is thus not due to electronic interactions, otherwise associated with magnetism. Due to their unique magnetization, altermagnets also produce intriguing possibilities for other ordered phases of matter. Magnetism and superconductivity are the two most celebrated quantum phases of matter and usually have a ‘friend- foe’ dichotomous relation, but combining superconductivity instead with altermagnetism opens for new exceptional possibilities. In this talk I will give a brief introduction to altermagnetism to illustrate its basic properties. I will then show several novel effects occurring when altermagnetism is combined with superconductivity, either with both properties inherent in the same material or combined in heterostructures. The effects include finite momentum pairing, field-induced superconductivity, and perfect superconducting diode effect.

 

keynote placeholderMarité Cardenas

University of the Basque Country, Spain

Title: Beyond flatland – Coexisting flat and curved supported lipid bilayers on SiO2 nanoparticle scaffolds.
Marité is an enthusiastic, result-focused physical chemist with strong expertise in biocolloids and bionanotechnology. The structure/function/composition relation in biological colloids has been the red thread in her research and lately she has put great efforts to develop methodologies to study curvature induced phase separation in biomembranes from a structural and compositional point of view. She started her academic journey in Caracas, Venezuela, moved to Sweden and continued her studies in Lund Technical University as Lund University.  She did her postdoc at Malmö University and started her first lab as a PI in Copenhagen University, returned to Malmö University, was visiting professor at Nanyang Technological University and currently her group is located at Instituto Biofisika, University of the Basque Country, as Ikerbasque Research Professor while keeping some activities at Malmö University.


keynote placeholderAnne-Caroline Genix

Université Montpellier, France

Description to come.

keynote placeholderStefanus Harjo

Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex, Japan

Stefanus Harjo is a prominent researcher and instrument scientist at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC), part of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from Ibaraki University and has been with J-PARC since 2005. Harjo specializes in materials engineering, focusing on neutron diffraction to investigate the internal structures, mechanical properties, and microstructural behavior of various materials. He has played a key role in developing advanced neutron instruments and experimental methods, particularly for in situ measurements under diverse environmental conditions. His work has led to significant insights into deformation mechanisms in metallic materials, including steels, magnesium alloys and high-entropy alloys. Notably, he has explored phenomena such as martensitic transformations and mechanical stability across a wide temperature range.

Title: Microstructure and Strength of Steel Across High to Cryogenic Temperatures: Operando Neutron Diffraction 
Steels have long been key structural materials, with ongoing development to meet modern demands. Neutron diffraction, used for over three decades, initially focused on residual stress measurement. Advancements in spallation sources now enable quantitative analysis of microstructure evolution. We have developed devices and methods for operando experiments under various thermal and mechanical conditions. The presentation covers heat-treatment effects in high-strength steels, hydrogen’s impact on 310S steel, and cryogenic deformation of ultrafine-grained 304 steel. 


keynote placeholderFlorencia Malamud

Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland

Dr. Florencia Malamud is an Instrument Scientist at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, where she works on the POLDI time-of-flight engineering diffractometer. A graduate of the Balseiro Institute in Argentina, her research focuses on wavelength-resolved neutron transmission techniques, crystallographic texture analysis, and residual stress characterization in engineering materials. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers, developed innovative texture analysis methodologies using neutron diffraction and imaging techniques, and contributed to diverse applications, including in additive manufacturing, cultural heritage, and engineering materials.

Title: Advanced neutron techniques for additive manufacturing characterization 
Additive manufacturing is a technology set to revolutionize industrial production. In order to accelerate the advancement, ensure quality and safety as well as to recognize and benefit from the full potential of such advanced manufacturing a comprehensive understanding of the process, the process parameters and their influence on the established material and components are of upmost importance. In particular direct insights into the process, the formation and evolution of the material defining the performance of the final part are invaluable. In metal additive manufacturing operando neutron studies have the potential to provide key information on bulk material properties in terms of microstructure, texture, strain fields and phase composition, which define the material properties. This requires operando additive manufacturing sample environments and advanced neutron techniques. Examples from our work in the Applied Materials Group at Paul Scherrer Institute shall be provided.

 


keynote placeholderTamim Darwish

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Australia

Title: Deuteration Facilities: Catalysing Excellence in Neutron Scattering 

Description to come.

keynote placeholderAllen Scheie

Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA

Allen Scheie is a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he studies quantum materials with neutron spectroscopy. Prior to this, he was a postdoc at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for three years, before which he did his PhD at Johns Hopkins University under professor Collin Broholm. A unifying theme in his research is using neutron spectroscopy to probe exotic states, and has recently focused defining ways to measure solid state entanglement.

Title: Measuring quantum spin entanglement with neutron scattering
Electron entanglement is ubiquitous in solid state quantum materials, underpinning exotic states like superconductivity and quantum spin liquids. However, entanglement has been historically very difficult to experimentally measure, which hampers our understanding of such states. In principle, he two-point correlations measured in magnetic neutron scattering encode entanglement information. We have recently shown, using both 1D and 2D materials, that various entanglement witnesses can be extracted from neutron scattering data: one-tangle, two-tangle, and quantum Fisher Information. I will go through several examples of how the entanglement witnesses give detailed and model-independent insight into quantum materials, and end by defining open problems and future directions for this work.

 

keynote placeholderAdrian Brügger

Columbia, USA

Description to come.

keynote placeholderChen-Yu Liu

University of Illinois, USA

Description to come.

keynote placeholderJoseph Bevitt

ABSTO, Australia

Description to come.