Confirmed keynote speakers:
Annica 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.
Marité 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.
Anne-Caroline Genix
Université Montpellier, France
Anne-Caroline Genix is associate professor at the University of Montpellier since 2006, where she is a member of the Soft Matter group at Laboratoire Charles Coulomb. She received her PhD in physical chemistry of polymers from the University Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris, followed by a postdoctoral stay in San Sebastian in the group headed by Juan Colmenero. Her research primarily focuses on polymers and polymer nanocomposites, with a particular emphasis on understanding their structure and dynamics probed by scattering techniques (neutrons and X-rays) and dielectric spectroscopy. In 2018, she took a sabbatical year to join Alexei Sokolov's group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she studied the properties of interfacial polymer layers in nanocomposites.
Title: Scattering studies of mesopores templated by (poly)ionic liquids
Our group works on methodological development to analyze small-angle scattering data of complex soft matter systems. This talk will be focused on mesoporous materials, which are crucial for catalytic and ionic conductive membranes. A deep understanding of their molecular structure is necessary to optimize macroscopic properties, particularly ionic transport for energy applications. Our materials are based on a new hydrolytic synthesis method for mesoporous ionosilica films templated by ionic liquids. A quantitative model was developed to describe SAXS intensities of cylindrical mesopores, integrating radial polydispersity derived from nitrogen adsorption isotherms, thereby offering a comprehensive view of mesopore geometry. Additionally, the incorporation of poly(ionic liquid)s was explored to improve mechanical flexibility. SAXS and SANS measurements revealed a surprising molecular structure, with ionic liquid counterions penetrating the ionosilica matrix surrounding the pores. The poly(ionic liquid) forms patches decorating the pore walls, adopting a tunable conformation sensitive to solvent conditions.
Stefanus 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.
Florencia 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.
Frank Gabel
Institut Max von Laue, France
Frank Gabel has studied physics at Karlsruhe Technical University (now KIT) in Germany, and Joseph Fourier University (now UGA), Grenoble, France, from 1995 to 2000. He carried out a PhD thesis at the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS) from 2000-2003 under the supervision of Dr. Giuseppe Zaccaï and Dr. Martin Weik on protein dynamics studied by incoherent neutron scattering. From 2004-2006 he joined Dr. Michael Sattler’s NMR group at EMBL Heidelberg, Germany, as a postdoc developing combined approaches of small angle scattering (SAXS/SANS) and NMR for structural studies of biomacromolecular complexes in solution. In 2006 he was recruited as a staff scientist at IBS Grenoble to promote the use of small angle scattering and integrative structural biology approaches within the Grenoble PSB (Partnership for Structural Biology). Since 2010, Frank Gabel has been working as a project leader in Dr. Bruno Franzetti’s ELMA (Extremophiles and Large Molecular Assemblies) group at IBS.
Since December 1st 2023 Frank Gabel has been appointed as head of the newly created “Biology, Deuteration, Chemistry and Soft Matter” (BDCS) group at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), Grenoble. The group integrates staff from the deuteration, lipid and chemistry laboratories, as well as from the ILL laboratories of the PSCM (Partnership of Soft Condensed Matter) and from PSB. The tasks of the group include carrying out neutron-related developments and research in the fields of biology, deuteration, chemistry and soft matter, operating the laboratory user programs, strengthening interactions with the ILL user community and instrument groups, as well as promoting scientific collaborations within PSB and PSCM.
Title: Support Facilities for Biology, Deuteration, Chemistry and Soft Matter: getting the best out of your neutron experiments
Allen 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.
Adrian Brügger
Columbia, USA
Adrian Brügger received his Ph.D. in 2017 in civil engineering (co-advised by applied physics) from Columbia University, with a focus on mechanics of materials, engineering materials diffraction, and structural health monitoring. Brügger’s research interests focus on using neutrons on structures and materials critical to the built environment, including general non-destructive stress measurement in infrastructure, residual stress & contact force mapping of multi-body systems, eigenstrain analysis of complex geometries under thermal loading, and material kinetics of structural materials under high temperature (fire) conditions. Brügger serves as the Director of the Robert A. W. Carleton Strength of Materials Laboratory, where he has led numerous forensic materials testing projects on major global infrastructure. Brügger is the instrument spokesperson for the CUPI²D imaging instrument at the ORNL Second Target Station project.
Title: At the Intersection of Infrastructure, Mechanics, and Materials: Probing Failure-Critical Structures using Neutron Diffraction & Imaging
Major civil infrastructure systems face a multitude of hazards in their decades to centuries of service. Understanding the internal mechanics of critical members in such structures under fracture, embrittlement, corrosion, and fire is therefore pivotal in their stewardship. We present an array of work performed at LANL and ORNL to quantify the behavior of large-scale parallel wire bridge cables using various techniques in neutron scattering and imaging. We show that neutrons provide unparalleled insights into material kinetics of ASTM A586 steel during fire events. Further, we measure the complex internal multibody packing and friction mechanics of parallel wires, as found in tension structures ranging from elevators, marine structures, to bridges. Beyond this fundamental work, an exciting case study is presented with neutron measurements made on post-failure samples to support the forensic investigation of the Arecibo Telescope collapse in Puerto Rico. We conclude with a look to emerging neutron characterization techniques in engineering materials and beyond.
Chen-Yu Liu
University of Illinois, USA
Joseph Bevitt
ANSTO, Australia