Keynote speakers L. Bocquet L. Brochard C. De Tomas J. Druhan R. Helmig S. Lorthois
Lydéric Bocquet is a CNRS researcher and attached Professor at Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris) working at the Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole normale suprieure LPENS. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences. His research is at the interface between condensed matter, fluid dynamics, and nano-science. With his research team they combine experiments, theory, and molecular simulations to explore the mechanisms of the dynamics of fluid interfaces from the macroscopic down to molecular level. His team developed unique experiments to study fluid transport using nanofluidics. His fundamental research has led to the creation of four start-ups, including Sweetch Energy in the field of osmotic energy and Hummink in the field of additive manufacturing on a nanometric scale.
Laurent Brochard is a researcher at Navier lab (ENPC, Univ. Gustave Eiffel, CNRS) since 2012, and professor at École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC) since 2023. He received his Ph.D. from Université Paris-Est in 2011. He is also engineer from École Polytechnique (France) and from École nationale des ponts et chaussées (France). His research focuses on multi-scale approaches for the study of the physics and mechanics of materials with emphasis on phenomena that have their origin at the molecular scale: adsorption and poromechanics, fracture mechanics and failure initiation, thermo-mechanical couplings, and confined phase transition. Targeted applications are mostly in geomechanics (CO2 sequestration, nuclear waste and energy storage, earth and bio-sourced construction, cementitious materials, and fault stability). -> abstract
Carla de Tomas’ research interests focus on disordered carbon materials due to their sustainability and tunability to target a wide variety of technological applications, in particular ion batteries, gas storage and air and water purification. She joined Imperial in 2021 with a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship to work in the optimisation of carbon electrodes for sodium-ion batteries, a more sustainable alternative to lithium-based chemistries. She works closely with experimentalists leaders in the field to guide the rational design of the active carbon material combining high-throughput atomistic simulation and machine-learning tools. Prior to joining Imperial, She worked as Senior Computational Materials Scientist in Happy Electron Ltd. (2020), an international start-up company developing next-generation batteries in the electric vehicles industry with headquarters in London. Before moving to London she held positions at The University of Tokyo as JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow, and Curtin University as Research Associate in the Carbon Group.
Jennifer L. Druhan is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2015 in the Department of Earth Science & Environmental Change. Since 2019 she is also Professeure Associée at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. Her research interests center around the ability to identify the underlying processes contributing to chemical variability during reactive transport through porous media using measurements and modeling of associated stable isotope fractionations. Her recent work has involved integrating stable isotope systems in numerical models of reactive flow and transport to unravel the internal watershed structure and function and emerging stream concentration-discharge relationships
Prof. Rainer Helmig is the head of the Institute for Modelling Hydraulic and Environmental Systems, Department of Hydromechanics and Modelling of Hydrosystems at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He is the Kimberly-Clark Distinguished Lecturer 2025 of the International Society for Porous Media. Rainer Helmig is widely recognized as a pioneer and visionary in developing numerical modelling concepts in the fields of groundwater hydrology, subsurface energy storage, and coupled processes at the interface between porous media and free-flow compartments. -> abstract
Sylvie Lorthois is a CNRS Research Director in the Porous and Biological Media group of the Fluid Mechanics Institute of Toulouse. After an engineering degree and a master's degree in fluid mechanics obtained at Sup'aéro, Toulouse, in 1995, she diversified her training in 1996 with a master's degree in vascular biology from the Medical School of Paris Sud University. Her PhD, defended in 1999 at the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, focused on occlusive pathologies of the cerebral macro-circulation. She joined the CNRS in 2001 after a post-doctoral stay at the University of California at Berkeley, where she learned about the fundamental principles of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. She is now interested in all aspects of brain microcirculation (morphogenesis and architecture, blood flow and transport, regulation and application to functional brain imaging, interaction with cerebro-spinal/interstitial fluid flow, involvement in brain pathologies, ...), which she approaches mainly from a theoretical and numerical modeling perspective. For that purpose, she collaborates on a regular basis with biologists, physiologists and clinicians. In parallel, she also works on the physics of red blood cell flow in networks, which she approaches mainly based on microfluidic |
