Plenary speakers (confirmed)
Yiwen Chu (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
Yiwen Chu has been an assistant professor in the Physics Department at ETH Zürich since 2019. Before that she did her PhD at Harvard University and a postdoc at Yale University. Her group at ETH works on building hybrid devices that combine the unique capabilities of different quantum systems and using them for quantum information and studying fundamental physics.
Niels Asger Mortensen (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark)
Mesoscopic electrodynamics of metals and 2 D materials
Biography: Mortensen is a full professor & VILLUM Investigator in the Center for Nano Optics and a Chair of Technical Science in the Danish Institute for Advanced Study, both at the University of Southern Denmark. Previously, he held a full professorship (faculty since 2004) at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). In addition to his MSc (1998) and PhD (2001) degrees from DTU, he holds higher doctoral degrees from University of Copenhagen (Dr. Scient., 2021) and DTU (Dr. Tech., 2006). He is a fellow of APS, OSA, SPIE, IOP, and European Academy of Sciences.
Giovanni Volpe (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Optics, soft & active matter, deep learning
Giovanni Volpe is a Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Gothenburg University, where he leads the Soft Matter Lab. His research interests include soft matter, optical trapping and manipulation, statistical mechanics, brain connectivity, and machine learning. He has authored more than 100 articles and reviews on soft matter, statistical physics, optics, physics of complex systems, brain network analysis, and machine learning. He co-authored the books "Optical Tweezers: Principles and Applications" (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and "Simulation of Complex Systems" (IOP Press, 2021). He has developed several software packages for optical tweezers (OTS ‐ Optical Tweezers Software), brain connectivity (BRAPH‐Brain Analysis Using Graph Theory), and microscopy enhanced by deep learning (DeepTrack).
Mie Andersen (Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark)
Machine learning in surface science and catalysis
Mie Andersen is a Fellow and Associate Professor at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the Center for Interstellar Catalysis at Aarhus University in Denmark. She obtained her PhD in nanoscience from Aarhus University in 2014, and then moved to the Technical University of Munich to join the group of Prof. Karsten Reuter, first as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and subsequently as a group leader. In 2021 she received an AIAS fellowship and a Villum Young Investigator grant and took up her current position in Aarhus. Her research interests include heterogeneous catalysis, surface science, astrochemistry and machine learning. In her work she uses computational methods to study the relationship between materials structure and catalytic activity, mostly for industrial heterogeneous catalysis, but lately also for interstellar dust grain catalysis.
Michael Ramsey-Musolf (T.D. Lee Institute/Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA)
Shattering the Lavender Ceiling: A Gay Theoretical Physicist's Perspective
Diversity & inclusivity in physics
Michael Ramsey-Musolf is a T.D. Lee Professor at the T.D. Lee Institute/Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also Director of the Amherst Center for Fundamental Interactions. His research concentrates on physics beyond the Standard Model at the interface of nuclear and elementary particle theory with cosmology and astrophysics, with a particular emphasis on the origin of the cosmic matter-antimatter asymmetry, the thermal history of electroweak symmetry-breaking, and fundamental symmetries. He obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1989, received the 1990 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics, and was awarded an NSF Young Investigator grant. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Michael was also ordained an Episcopal priest in 1994 and has served in a non-stipendiary capacity at various churches throughout the U.S., with a particular focus on empowerment of at-risk youth.
Sabrina Maniscalco (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Sabrina Maniscalco is a Professor of Quantum Information, Computing and Logic at the University of Helsinki, Adjunct Professor at Aalto University, Vice-Director of the National Centre of Excellence in Quantum Technology, Lead for Education of InstituteQ - the Finnish National Institute for Quantum Technology, and CEO and a co-founder of Algorithmiq, a startup developing quantum software for the Life Sciences.
She obtained her Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the University of Palermo in 2004. After working as a postdoctoral researcher in Bulgaria and South Africa, she joined the Quantum Physics Research Group at the University of Turku, Finland. She then established her research group there, working as an Academy Research Fellow. From 2011 to 2014, she was Associate Professor at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. She moved back to Finland in 2014 as the Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Turku, where she worked until 2020 when she joined the University of Helsinki.
Sabrina's research interests encompass, in addition to theoretical and fundamental aspects of quantum physics, quantum technology and quantum computers. Author of over 200 scientific publications in high-impact international journals, she has coordinated national and European research consortia, serves in the board of several Quantum Science and Technologies Institutions and is the Finnish representative of the Quantum Technology Initiative at CERN. She is passionate about Outreach and Science&Art, her latest project being the outreach platform Qplaylearn (www.qplaylearn.com).
Taina Kurki-Suonio (Aalto University, Finland)
Shifting Gears in the Race for Harnessing Fusion Energy
Studia Generalia event page (in Finnish)
Taina Kurki-Suonio is a senior lecturer at the department of Applied Physics at Aalto University. She specializes in the physics of energetic particles in fusion reactor conditions and has been heading the ASCOT research group at Aalto since the beginning of the millennium. The international fusion community she also serves as a member of the editorial board for Nuclear Fusion, the most prestigious periodical in the field. Lately she has become involved more broadly in energy issues, is the vice chair of the ESFRI energy SWG, and serves as the chairman for the Nuclear Science and Technology Symposium 2022 (SYP2022) [https://ats-fns.fi/en/syp2022].
Pekka Manninen (CSC, Finland)
LUMI: Europe's flagship supercomputer
Dr. Pekka Manninen is the director of the LUMI Leadership Computing Facility. He has a long experience in supercomputing and supercomputing infrastructures and has been leading and involved in several pan-European e-infrastructure initiatives over the course of years. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and has the title of docent at the University of Helsinki.