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MaNEP Newsletter n°49 - October 2025
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Dear colleagues, dear members of the MaNEP association,
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After a short interruption of our newsletter, we are now back on the regular schedule. I hope that you all had a good summer and that the start of the semester was productive. It was certainly nice to see that this year Nobel prize in Physics went to themes that are close to the heart of the MaNEP association, namely quantum physics, superconductivity and of course the application of materials. It also showed how close the quantum materials and quantum science and information have become and we are certainly looking forward to many more progress in this direction in the future.
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Needless to say, there is a lot that has happened in the interval and we have an exciting newsletter for you, with my heartfelt thanks to all that contributed to it.
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As you will see the activity of the network is going strong, as can be seen from events, past and future, and publication highlights, as well as by the many colleagues whose activity was recognized by an award or a prize, both on the fundamental side and for the innovation one. Congratulations to all, for your high level of activity and dedication.
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In addition to these joyful parts, we have also in this newsletter a homage to our colleague T.M. Rice who passed away in July 2024. For his friends and those who knew him this is an occasion to remember him, and for the younger colleagues who might not have had the immense chance to interact with him, this is an occasion to discover this giant of theoretical physics.
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Finally concerning the events at the heart of MaNEP, you will see in this newsletter a short summary of the Saas-Fee winter school that took place in January 2025. Many thanks to all the teachers and students and of course Claude Monney and Anna Tamai, as respective chairs of the program and organization committees, for this great success.
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As our second regular event, we will have our usual SWM2026 taking place in Les Diablerets from August 25 to 27, 2026. Titus Neupert has agreed to be the chair of the program committee and Ivan Maggio-Aprile the one of the organization committee. We are looking forward to an exciting program and hope to see you all there. This will be the occasion to have a live forum, in which in addition to the usual business of the association, we will also discuss broadly how to handle the future of MaNEP. Indeed, it is now 12 years since the beginning of MaNEP as an association (practically an NCCR2) and it is time to see how we could step up and continue playing the role that MaNEP has played so well for the community in these last 24 years. We will also start in December with a large zoom meeting to discuss these issues. Keep tuned for more on this very soon.
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Meanwhile enjoy reading the newsletter.
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What's new ?
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From 27 to 30 July 2025 the workshop "Correlations and Topology in Moiré Materials" in Ascona, Ticino, brought together several leading world experts in the field of moiré materials. A moiré material is a special type of layered two-dimensional material where due to a twist angle or lattice mismatch between the layers a large-scale geometric moiré pattern appears.
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The 10th MaNEP winter school took place in Saas-Fee in January 2025. The school welcomed 65 students, with almost a third of them from outside the MaNEP association. Beyond Switzerland, students travelled from Italy, Germany, the UK and even the USA to join us for an intense week of physics, sun and excellent snow.
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The research project “HTS Superconducting Joints for NMR Magnets” was successfully concluded in May 2025. Initiated in September 2020 with financial support from the Innosuisse Agency, the project was a collaboration between Dr. Davide Nardelli’s group at Bruker BioSpin and Prof. Carmine Senatore’s group at the Department of Quantum Matter Physics (DQMP), University of Geneva.
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Thomas Maurice Rice, Professor at ETH Zurich, Fellow of the Royal Society and Member of the National Academy, passed away on July 18th 2024 at the age of 85. Throughout his career at ETH, he has been a dedicated and influential figure in the Swiss physics community. Notably, he was among the founding members of the NCCR MaNEP under the leadership of Øystein Fischer.
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Pablo Cayado, a former member of the group of Applied Superconductivity, UNIGE, has been awarded a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship, one of the most prestigious and competitive research grants in the Spanish scientific system, for a collaborative project between the University of Geneva and Bruker BioSpin on high-temperature superconductors (HTS) for NMR applications.
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Brigitte Decrausaz is the winner of the Dectris prize for best experimental physics master thesis at the University of Zurich. During this thesis project, Brigitte studied Magnons in the Multiferroic Ni3TeO6 using neutron scattering. The project was supervised by Jakob Lass and Daniel Mazzone at the PSI.
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Celia Lucas, PhD student in the group of Applied Superconductivity at the UNIGE, with a position funded by Innosuisse, was awarded the Best Student Award at the 2025 Coated Conductor for Applications Workshop (CCA-2025).
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Daniel Mazzone, PSI, (LNS laboratory, NUM) has been awarded the 13th Erwin Félix Lewy Bertaut Prize for “his outstanding contributions in the field of quantum effects in strongly correlated electron materials, employing cutting-edge X-ray and neutron scattering techniques”.
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Margherita Melegari was awarded for her exceptional performance in the Swiss final of “My Thesis in 180 Seconds”. A PhD candidate in the group of Alberto Morpurgo at UNIGE, she won the 3rd Prize for the presentation of her thesis “Modification and control of band structure in two-dimensional materials via a giant electric field“.
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Frédéric Mila, professor at EPFL received the Charpak-Ritz Prize for his contributions to the theory of strongly correlated systems ranging from high-temperature superconductors to frustrated quantum magnets. A condensed matter theorist at EPFL, Frédéric Mila collaborates continously with experimental research groups around the world.
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Chang-Jae Roh, in the group of Andrea Caviglia, UNIGE has been awarded the “The Oxide Electronics Prize for an excellent poster” for his presentation: “Wrinkle-driven symmetry evolution in PbTiO3/SrRuO3 freestanding membranes” at iWOE-30.
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Giacomo Sala, in the group of Andrea Caviglia, UNIGE has received a highly competitive SNSF Ambizione fellowship.
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The aim of his project is to investigate the generation and transport of orbital angular momentum in 2D electron gases at the interface between insulating transition-metal oxides.
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Tejas Singar, in the group of Christoph Renner, was awarded the Würth Prize for the best PhD Thesis in physics at the University of Geneva. In his PhD work, he unambiguously reveals for the first time a close link between a Lifschitz transition and a radical change in the electronic structure of the vortex cores in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d.
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Prof. Fabian von Rohr, UNIGE, has been elected as a new member of the board of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) Chemistry Platform. This appointment highlights his contributions to the field of chemistry and chemical physics. The SCNAT Chemistry Platform plays an essential role in promoting chemistry as a discipline in Switzerland.
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By Zurab Guguchia, PSI
Kagome superconductors have fascinated scientists for their beautiful, web-like atomic structure and their rich variety of intertwined electronic behaviors. Among their most mysterious properties is the breaking of time-reversal symmetry (TRS)—a situation where the laws of physics no longer look the same if time were to run backward. This unusual effect hints at exotic patterns of microscopic currents on the lattice and at new kinds of quantum order—a novel form of magnetism in which the electron’s spin does not play the dominant role.
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By Subhrangsu Sarkar, UNIFR
This report is about the observation of an unusual spontaneous voltage (SpV) that develops in epitaxial heterostructures made of the high-Tc cuprate YBa2Cu3O7 (YBCO) and the manganite Nd0.65(Ca,Sr)0.35MnO3 (NCSMO). The latter hosts competing orders, in particular, a majority phase made of a polar charge-orbital-ordered and antiferromagnetic insulator and a minority phase that is non-polar, ferromagnetic (FM) and conducting.
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Discover more MaNEP Network's research and innovations trough other publication highlights.
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Scientific Perspective
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By Tomáš Bzdušek, University of Zurich
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Topological principles constitute at present an integral component of condensed matter physics, deeply influencing the modern characterization of electronic states while also guiding materials design. In this Perspective, I highlight three research threads in single-particle topological band theory that have recently gained momentum while fruitfully nurturing each other.
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Upcoming events
October, 14-16, 2025, Aargau, Switzerland
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December 1 - 2, 2025, CERN, Switzerland
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January 4-9, 2026, Saas-Fee, Switzerland
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January 14-21, 2026, Rigi Kaltbad, Switzerland
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May 11-12, 2026, PSI Villigen, Switzerland
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SWM 2026 - Swiss Workshop on Materials with Novel Electronic Properties
August 25-28, 2026, Les Diablerets, Switzerland
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(images credit: X. Ravinet - UNIGE, MaNEP, Bruker BioSpin, UNIGE, UNIZH, PSI, EPFL, J. Schmid, M. Dzambegovic - PSI, UNIFR)
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MaNEP Switzerland Network
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24, quai Ernest-Ansermet - 1211 Geneva 4
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