Paulina Majchrzak
Postdoctoral Fellow
Stanford University
Talk Title: Control of the electronic properties of van der Waals materials guided by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
Paulina Majchrzak is currently supported by Stanford Energy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research interests straddle the boundary between fundamental and applied science. She is developing spectroscopic methods to study electrochemical systems in operando, aiming to uncover the mechanisms that govern electrochemical activity in rechargeable battery cathodes. Simultaneously, she is contributing to the setup of an ultrafast soft x-ray photoemission experiment at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS-II), enabling the investigation of correlated electronic and atomic dynamics in complex materials.
Research Interests: Paulina’s introduction to advanced materials science began during her undergraduate studies in chemical physics at the University of Edinburgh, where she undertook a year-long internship at the UK Research & Innovation’s ultrafast laser user facility, Artemis. This formative experience inspired her doctoral research in solid-state physics at Aarhus University, Denmark. In her thesis work, recognized with a doctoral prize, she investigated the electronic structures of materials in non-equilibrium and operational conditions, with the goal of unlocking their potential for next-generation electronic and optoelectronic applications.
Maitane Muñoz-Basagoiti
IST-BRIDGE Fellow
Institute of Science and Technology Austria
Talk Title: In-silico design of bio-inspired functionalities: from molecular catalysis and polymer folding to large-scale cell remodelling
Bio: I am currently an IST-BRIDGE fellow at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) working in the group of Andela Šarić, where I develop coarse-grained models of biological and soft-matter systems. I completed my PhD at ESPCI Paris under the supervision of Zorana Zeravcic and Olivier Rivoire, where I focused on deriving design rules to realise catalysis and polymer folding within the context of programmable matter. Before that, I obtained a Master’s degree in General Physics at Lund University in Sweden, and a Bacherlor’s degree in Physics at the University of the Basque Country in Spain.
Research Interests: During my PhD, I became fascinated by the divide between the living and the non-living. Even though both types of matter are constituted of the same fundamental building blocks, inanimate matter is functionally-rigid, while living matter is remarkably versatile and adaptable. From efficient catalysis to self-assembly, complex polymerisation strategies such as treadmilling or large-scale remodelling of the cell, how can the laws of physics be exploited for such advanced functionalities to emerge, and more importantly, how can we realise them artificially in the lab? In my research, I use coarse-grained models based on spherical particles interacting through programmable potentials to build minimal representations of biological and soft matter systems at different scales — from molecular to cellular and colloidal scales. These models constitute a computationally cheap, yet powerful physical paradigm to extract the mechanisms underlying biological matter, and to analyse the derived design principles beyond their original biological context — opening the door to the complete space of possible designs that yield a functionality of interest.
Martina (Tina) Laura Ojeda
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire (CERN)
Talk Title: Higgs boson interactions 10+ years after the discovery
Bio: Martina Laura Ojeda is a postdoctoral research fellow at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, working on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 2021 and was then a postdoctoral research fellow at DESY in Hamburg.
Research Interests: Martina's research primarily focuses on the Higgs boson, the most recently discovered particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics and a key component in the process that gives particles their mass. She is specifically interested in understanding how the Higgs boson interacts with other particles. Martina has studied Higgs boson interactions with heavier particles like the top quark (the heaviest quark) and the tau lepton (the heaviest lepton), and is currently investigating Higgs-photon interactions. Additionally, Martina leads a group working on the development and characterisation of algorithms to identify the passage of electrons through the ATLAS detector. She has also contributed to both software and hardware upgrades to the ATLAS detector in preparation for the High Luminosity LHC.
Grace Pan
Postdoctoral Fellow
UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Atomic-scale design and control of quantum materials
Bio: Grace Pan is an experimental condensed matter and materials physicist and an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Berkeley. Prior to Berkeley, she received her PhD in physics from Harvard University and her BS in physics, summa cum laude, from Yale University. Grace’s work has been recognized by the Gertrude and Maurice Goldhaber Prize, The University of Chicago Boeing Quantum Creators Prize, and the Malvern Panalytical Scientific Award. Outside of the lab, she enjoys reading, writing, and birding.
Research Interests: Quantum materials encompass a diverse set of compounds with properties that emerge from interactions at broad energy or length scales. Such properties include unconventional superconductivity, quantum spin liquidity, topology, excitonic pairing, symmetry-breaking orders, and non-equilibrium behaviors. By synthesizing quantum materials with control over the dimensional, chemical, or strain degrees of freedom, we can directly control these energy and length scales. Indeed, from high-Tc superconductivity in the copper oxides to the fractional quantum Hall effect in GaAs heterostructures to the novel electronic states in twisted Moiré superlattices, materials discovery, perfection, and control has consistently enabled the realization of new physics often not predated by theory alone.
My work centers on developing atomic- and meso-scale synthesis methods of quantum materials to question, coax, and control their myriad phenomena. I additionally employ low-temperature electronic transport, x-ray synchrotron probes, and electron microscopy to interrogate fundamental materials behaviors and close the ‘materials-by-design’ loop. During my PhD, I exploited atomically-precise and chemically-targeted techniques to design and discover a new family of nickel-based superconductors, uncovering underlying universalities and subtle differences in the phase diagram of an unconventional superconductor. As a postdoctoral fellow, I am developing new methods of dimensional control toward the arbitrary assembly of hetero-interface systems.
Hannah Rana
BHEX Fellow
Harvard University
Talk Title: The New Era of Experimental Black Hole Physics with Space VLBI
Bio: Hannah Rana is a BHEX Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, working on the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) space mission. She was previously a Schmidt Science Fellow at Harvard University in the Harvard Ophthalmology AI Lab and the Neural Prosthetics Research Lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She completed her PhD at the University of Oxford in astrophysics instrumentation, and has held appointments at Caltech, NASA, ESA and CERN in applied physics and astronomy. Hannah has worked on 5 space-based astrophysics missions to date.
Research Interests: Hannah’s current research focuses on black hole detection, where she works at the intersection of black hole physics and very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) instrumentation for ground and space. The BHEX mission aims to take the sharpest image in the history of astrophysics, by resolving the theorized photon ring, capturing the light gravitationally lensed by supermassive black holes (SMBH) M87* and Sagittarius A*. Hannah uses General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations to study features of SMBH photon rings. Hannah’s research interests have spanned a diverse and interdisciplinary range of physics topics and applications, where the common thread has been in enhancing sensitivity of detection instruments and theoretically and computationally modeling detection. In detection modeling, Hannah has worked at the intersection of physics and visual neuroscience to advance the development of an artificial retinal code that mimics retinal activity whilst modeled as a physics detector. The ultimate aim of her retinal encoding work is to inspire the development of retinal prosthesis for restoring vision to the blind. Hannah is excited by interdisciplinary physics that addresses the detection and processing of light through instruments and theoretical computation.
Despoina (Despina) Sampsonidou
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Oregon
Talk Title: Precision Meets Discovery: Electroweak Physics, gFEX, and EFT Insights
Bio: Despina Sampsonidou grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece, and earned her PhD in particle physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon, working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Her expertise spans detector operations, software development, and physics analysis. She plays a leading role in vector boson scattering analyses and Beyond the Standard Model physics using Effective Field Theory interpretations. As an expert in ATLAS’s Level-1 Calorimeter trigger system, she has contributed significantly to the calibration of the Global Feature Extractor, improving real-time event selection for new physics searches. She is the co-convener of the Standard Model Electroweak subgroup, overseeing 24 analyses and managing over 300 researchers.
Research Interests: My research focuses on advancing high-energy physics through precision measurements, New Physics searches, and detector innovation. In the Standard Model, I have led efforts in the vector boson scattering analysis for the ZZ process, studying its decay into two leptons and two neutrinos. In Beyond the Standard Model physics, I pioneered the incorporation of Effective Field Theory constraints in di-Higgs production and currently contribute to Dark Matter Emerging Jets searches, using the gFEX trigger to detect low-mass dark matter signatures.
Looking ahead, I aim to pioneer the observation of yet-unobserved Standard Model processes and further search for dark matter through jet signatures. In terms of detector technology, I seek to leverage my expertise in TDAQ systems by implementing AI in ATLAS’s trigger subsystems, enhancing real-time event selection. I am committed to leadership and outreach, co-convening the Standard Model Electroweak subgroup and promoting inclusivity in physics through mentoring and science communication.