Keynote speakers

 C. De Tomas        L. Brochard      

               Carla De Tomas

My 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.

I 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. Here, I am working 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, I 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 I held positions at The University of Tokyo as JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow, and Curtin University as Research Associate in the Carbon Group.

               Laurent Brochard

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).